Keep your water pure & simple
Nothing symbolizes the gullibility of the modern consumer more than the bottled drinking water boom. Don’t get me wrong. I can see at least one good argument for bottled water: safety. In Third World countries, the water in the taps is usually unfit to drink. And restaurants often can’t be bothered to invest in water purification systems. This is as true of parts of Europe. So, if you are travelling or eating at a restaurant that seems to be insufficiently careful about the cleanliness of its water, then of course, I can see the argument for ordering bottled water.
But that’s about it. Anyone who orders bottled water in circumstances other than the ones I’ve described above has either been made a fool of or is a bit of an idiot.
Bottled water is not a new product. It has been available in Europe for decades. Because their tap water was rarely clean, it made sense for Europeans to treat water as a bottled drink; as the sort of thing you order along with the wine.
But the European predilection for bottled water remained at roughly the same level for many decades. The global water boom only began in the late 1970s and early 1980s when canny marketers began pushing Perrier in the US. The water — gently fizzy so it reminded you a little of soda water — had been around in Europe for years. But it was pitched to the US market as a sophisticated drink, as a way of declaring “I have arrived”.
Soon Americans began ordering Perrier by the case, drinking it with a twist of lemon as though it was a cocktail and even using it as a mix for alcohol. Encouraged by the success of Perrier, other European waters made a dash for the US market. Many were fizzy waters in the manner of Perrier, but some were still.
In most — if not all — of the US, the tap water is clean enough to drink. Nor is there a shortage of supplies of club soda. So why did Americans need to pay such high prices for bottled water?
Partly it was the lure of sophistication. But, as market penetration spread, the water companies began encouraging a culture of lies.
European waters were — or so credulous Americans were told — imbued with mystical properties. The gas in Perrier, for instance, was entirely natural. The water emerged from the earth full of bubbles.
The beauty industry was drafted to help spread the lies. Some of you will remember how, in the 1990s, articles about the miraculous effects of water began appearing. So called nutritionists told us that we should drink our body weights in water. Beauty editors declared that the secret of a great complexion was water. Other drinks, we were assured, would not do. The body thrived only on water. Every other liquid would not have this effect.Even the occasional hiccup could not stall the progress of the water marketing juggernaut. Perrier faded from the US market after a massive product recall. The gas inside a batch of bottles, we were told, was unsafe. Hang on a minute, we should have said. But surely the gas is natural?
But few people asked. And therefore they never found out that Perrier actually added the bubbles at a factory. Machines created the alleged natural sparkle. Most other sparkling waters follow a similar process.
Even though Perrier virtually disappeared, the water industry continued to grow. The big boys — Pepsi, Coke and the rest — entered the business selling ordinary water (available free from American taps) at a huge markup on the backs of multimillion-dollar marketing campaigns.
With so much money riding on the water boom, the media rarely questioned the claims made by the water companies. Hardly anyone challenged the basis of the water-is-healthy campaign: the assertion that the body needs water and not other liquids.
In fact, this claim twisted the truth. It is true that human beings need to drink plenty of fluids to avoid dehydration. But it is not true that fluids other than water cannot combat dehydration. What the flacks did was this: They took the medical evidence for the effects of dehydration (bad skin, body odour, etc.) and transformed it into the case for bottled water.
Not only did they get away with this, the media rarely asked the obvious follow-up question: Even if we need water rather than any other fluid, why does this water have to be the bottled stuff? Why can’t we just drink it from the tap?
In the end, it was another trendy campaign that finally made a dent in the water boom. The current Western obsession with global warming means that all products are audited on environmental grounds and on the basis of carbon miles.
On any environmental criterion, bottled water is a disaster. It uses glass or (more likely) plastic to bottle a product that does not need to be bottled and then transports it for many miles even though it is already available, in its natural state, at the destinations it travels to. At a time when the West is trying to cut its carbon footprint, bottled water is one of the worst environmental offenders.
The lunacy of a few years ago when restaurants had water menus and water sommeliers is now finally powering down. More and more restaurants in England and the US have abandoned the old scam of giving you a choice between types of bottled water while refusing to offer tap water. The US was always better when it came to providing tap water but even London restaurants now fill your glasses without question.
Sadly, India is neither environmentally conscious nor immune to the hand-me-down blandishments of marketers who have borrowed their scams from the West. So you’ll rarely be offered normal, purified water at a five-star hotel or a fancy restaurant. You will nearly always be ripped off with overpriced bottled water.
If you are sure about the cleanliness factor (and at hotels, water is always safe) then refuse the bottled option and ask for a jug of water.It’ll demonstrate that you are environmentally aware. But more important: It will prove that you aren’t an idiot, eager to be ripped off by some canny marketer.
Jul 5, 2008
India - Listen to the youth
LONDON: Last year a report by Goldman Sachs attracted considerable attention with its prediction that by 2050, India's GDP would surpass that of the US, making it the world's second largest economy. In a similar vein, a study by the McKinsey Global Institute on India's future prospects also echoed a hopeful optimism. Both reports paid rich tributes to the enormous role that the country's youthful middle class has played in reshaping India's clout. Huge socio-economic changes are taking shape as a consequence of this generation, liberalisation's children as they may be termed. But the rise of this young middle class will also have political ramifications which parties — particularly the Congress — ignore at their own risk. A potent dichotomy is at play here. The reforms process which began in the 1990s along with the process of globalisation has gradually influenced attitudes of the youth and the nation's global image. But this momentum is not without its tension. Liberalisation has brought a certain mobility to Indian society. Yet it has also irretrievably altered an old way of life. Liberalisation's children have metamorphosed from adolescence into staunch card-carrying members of the middle class — of the credit and debit variety. They belong to a socially fluid group, which has begun to admire self-made men over an old world patronage. Not for nothing do they view Infosys co-founders Narayana Murthy and Nandan Nilekani as icons. Members of this generation also tend to exercise a greater autonomy in choosing their life partners than ever before. Yet in the inimitable Indian way, traditions aren't abandoned — they are merely adapted with a modern twist. As the plethora of specialist matrimonial websites attest, a conventional non-discretionary 'arranged marriage' has given way to a virtual dawn where pragmatists are freely 'arranging' their own fates. Interestingly too, a global youth survey in 2007 covering 22,000 respondents in 17 countries — in the developed and developing world — by the Swedish strategy group Kairos Future revealed that alongside the Danes, young Indians were the ones most optimistic about their future and also about the future of their society. This is a generation which oozes an admirable self-confidence. It's also heartening that gender equity is ineluctably acquiring a steady momentum among this generation. As the 2001 census revealed, the female literacy rate during the period 1991-2001 increased by 14.87 per cent whereas male literacy rate rose by 11.72 per cent. Yet, as research by organisations such as the Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA) makes clear, there is a long way to go. On the flip side, this generation is working longer hours than their parents did. Maxims like a 'work-life balance' have acquired a sanctity once reserved for deities. Divorce rates are higher too. But in overall terms, this is still a blessed generation. Not even for a minute do liberalisation's children wish for the closed-minded official dogma that impeded their predecessors.Yet, despite such progress, political parties continue to misread this generation. In a country where majority of the population is under the age of 35, the political establishment is unquestionably geriatric. Youth is consigned to the back benches and denied substantive opportunities. Contrast that with the US, where a 46-year-old Barack Obama is running for president. Across the Atlantic, a revitalised Tory party has a 41-year-old leader in David Cameron and a 37-year-old Shadow Chancellor in George Osborne. It takes no flight of fancy to conclude that this simply would not have happened in contemporary India. An ossified political fraternity in the country would have cheerfully stymied their imagination and ascent by at least another few decades. But, the disconnect between the political parties and a youthful generation is not just about adequate representation. Importantly, it is also about values. And sadly, this disjunction is nowhere more glaringly apparent than in the Congress. Some weeks ago, a party spokes-person felt necessary to declare that the Congress does not tolerate sycophancy. It was soon followed by senior Congressmen pledging undivided loyalty to no higher cause than the Family. Such baroque eruptions only heighten the feeling among liberalisation's children that at the core, the Congress adheres to a code antithetical to their own. This younger generation does not like the BJP much but it is beginning to dislike the Congress a lot. When it looks at the Congress today, a party of aspiration is hardly the attribute that comes to mind. And in the next general elections, the city-dwelling swing voters of this youthful middle class may just prove to be decisive. After a spate of electoral reversals culminating with the latest one in Karnataka, the Congress is again seized by an epidemic of introspection. But no one ought to be fooled by the platitudinous humbug on offer. How a party can claim to be either modern or democratic while reposing ample faith in the hereditary principle is quite a mystery. At a philosophical level then, the Congress's condition isn't a cause for mourning. In large part, it indicates that a youthful generation is unwilling to support a project devoted to sacrificing a meritocratic vision for a flawed expediency. This stance may upset dynasts and sycophants alike. But it is the only way the party will ever contemplate genuine reforms. The writer is a London-based lawyer.
Fun - Demonic Dilemma
We hear people referring to men accused of horrific crimes as 'Ravanas'. The Lankan king has long been the recipient of Hindu invectives. But Ravana did not do the kind of things these men are alleged to have done. As for his wickedness, could there be extenuating circumstances? He had to go around lugging nine useless heads along with a single functional one — that may be why he became frustrated and mean. Consider that when one of the heads caught a cold or sneezed, it was hell for the other nine. He couldn't turn sideways without major contortions. If one head turned, all had to turn. If the heads had quarrelled, they did not cooperate, leading to schisms between the ranks. With four heads on the right and five on the left of the central one, he overbalanced when he walked to the side with more heads. He couldn't visit friends because he couldn't get his heads through their doorway. With all those heads, curling up in bed was impossible. Lying on his back all the time, he developed severe spondylosis. All 10 snored, generating a twister that sucked in the countryside. At mealtime, his two hands could not reach far enough to all the mouths. At least four would go hungry. Only the central head had an oesophagus, the rest were probably connected to it, but he would have had just the one stomach. Each might've enjoyed a different type of food: sorpotel, haggis, fish-vindaloo, murg-musallum, baingan-bhartha or mutton-biryani. The gastronomic assault dried up his gastric juices and created ulcers. As for alcohol, with just one peg each, 600 cc went into the stomach at once. No wonder he seemed to be drunk most of the time! When the heads conversed, apart from it being tough to talk from the side of your mouth, the cacophony must have been hideous. The central head might have often tried to be chairman of the panel, but couldn't get any of the others to listen. Romance was out. If one bent forward to kiss a girl, the other nine jealous guys must have frustrated him by pulling back just as he puckered up. So, two heads may be better than one, but 10 heads breed anarchy
World - Crunch time in Afghanistan
Managing the Afghan war is not going to be easy for the U.S. The Taliban is back — “refit, retrained, and rearmed.”
Even an intrepid traveller will fail to realise the half-hour on the crowded highway leaving Peshawar, by when he is already in the Khyber Pass. The winding road stretches ahead for another 50 km until he reaches the summit at Landi Kotal, just inside Pakistan, after a lifetime journey through mountains and canyons of such staggering beauty that he loses track of time and space. And then a breathtaking decline commences, depositing him summarily at the border town of Torkham. The Khyber Pass simply envelops you with its charm.
The Khyber Agency has always presented in history and politics an intriguing turf of the great game. Indeed, the dispatches in the western media from the Khyber in the recent days proclaim one thing insistently: it is unfair to say Pakistan isn’t fighting the “war on terror,” and with such a committed ally on its side, there is no need for the NATO to bypass Islamabad and deal directly with the tribes.
The Khyber operation will help to blunt the United States and NATO criticism — for the time being, at least — that the Pakistan military easing pressure on the militants in the tribal areas in the recent weeks gave them more space to operate within Afghanistan. It has given high publicity to the operation. Influential western journalists have been taken to the frontline. But does the Khyber operation make a difference?
It must be seen for what it is — a thoughtful public relations exercise. Khyber’s brooding mountains come out with stunning effect on western television screens. During the Afghan jihad in the 1980s, ambitious American politicians almost invariably visited Peshawar for a “photo opportunity” in the Khyber in the company of handsome Afghan mujahideen.
In fact, the Pakistani military was not involved in last week’s operation before the expected arrival of U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher in Islamabad. The paramilitary Frontier Corps under the control of the North West Frontier Province government was in charge. A day into the operation, Major General Alam Khattak, head of the Frontier Corps, told Kathy Gannon of the Associated Press on the Afghan beat: “We have occupied, captured all important heights, and we have taken control of the area.”
If so, it was a historic feat. Ms Gannon promptly wrote: “The offensive in the Khyber tribal region marked the first major military action Pakistan’s newly elected government has taken against the militants operating in the tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan. The government had said it preferred to try to defuse tension with the groups through negotiations, but with threats by Islamic militants to the city of Peshawar growing in recent weeks, the military decided to take action. Khyber is also a key route for moving U.S. military supplies into neighbouring Afghanistan.”
But the “success” of the operation proves nothing — neither the Frontier Corps’ professionalism nor the future of militant activity. There was no fighting; there were no casualties; there was no capture of irreconcilable militants. Nothing changed hands. If anything, Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud turned more rowdyish, warning that he would “turn into furnace” Sindh and Punjab. Baloney, of course. The mystery of Mr. Mehsud deepens.
Meanwhile, the war rolls on inside Afghanistan. It has become much more serious. For a second successive month, more U.S. and NATO troops were killed in Afghanistan than in Iraq. In June, the number touched 44 in Afghanistan compared to 30 in Iraq. But statistics can never tell the whole story. At any rate, scores of Afghans are also getting killed on any single day in the rain of American bombs. The war is becoming indescribably mean. Britain’s Ministry of Defence admitted to the London Times the use of the controversial thermobaric weapon, Hellfire AGM-114N. When fired from Apache attack helicopters or predator drone aircraft, the missile sucks the air out of the Taliban’s chest, shreds his internal organs and crushes his body. He cannot take shelter, as the blast creates a human-crushing vacuum with a second explosion. He instantly disintegrates.
Britain’s MoD spokesman in London said: “We call it an enhanced blast weapon.” But the unfortunate part is the weapon — also known as vacuum bomb — cannot identify a Taliban fighter. At the end of the day, no wonder, the Taliban’s “area of influence … is constantly growing,” to quote Zamir Kabulov, Russia’s veteran Afghan specialist who is serving as ambassador in Kabul. He believes that the Taliban has influence in “more than half of Afghanistan’s territory and controls up to 20 per cent of that area.”
A Pentagon study, Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan, which was released in Washington DC last week, also depicted a “fragile” security environment in Afghanistan. The report anticipated that the “Taliban will also probably attempt to increase its presence in the west and north.” No doubt, the Taliban has infiltrated the Afghan security organs. An inquiry into the abortive attempt to assassinate President Hamid Karzai in Kabul in April as he sat on a podium with foreign dignitaries revealed that at least six Afghans blamed for the attack were government functionaries, including an army general.
Curiously, the Pentagon study did not identify threats emanating from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region as a primary security challenge facing the U.S. troops. Instead, it cited a weak Afghan government, a non-functioning economy, narcotics production and corruption as the main challenges. It admitted that the Taliban had “coalesced into a resilient insurgency,” and would likely “increase the scope and pace” of its activities. The study saw the possibility of “two distinct insurgencies” appearing — the Taliban-led insurgency in the south and a “more complex, adaptive insurgency” in the east by several groups — with mutual cooperation and coordination.
But the NATO member-countries resist Washington’s exhortations to step up their troop commitments. The U.S. military does not have the manpower to cover the shortfall. In a presentation recently, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen said: “The simple math is that I can’t put any more forces in Afghanistan until I come down in Iraq.” He said the U.S. troops were “pressed very hard” from multiple deployments to both Iraq and Afghanistan and keeping up the present operational tempo would be “impossible.” At the same time, Adm. Mullen pointed out that Afghanistan was “at the heart of NATO right now. And I believe that whether NATO is relevant in the future is tied directly to a positive outcome in Afghanistan.”
Clearly, the crunch time is coming in Afghanistan. Added to the crises there — ranging from corruption and misgovernance to the drug problem — and growing alienation of the people due to the increasingly barbarous military tactic adopted by the coalition forces, plus the inability of the NATO to step up troop presence, there is the inchoate factor, what the outgoing NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Dan K. McNeill, called the “dysfunctional” political situation in Pakistan. Diverse power centres
The reality is that whereas Pervez Musharraf and the Pakistani military took all decisions previously, diverse power centres have since emerged and there are fundamental differences over the insurgency. Across the board — both civilian and military — there is reluctance to use the military for counterinsurgency operations. Army chief Ashfaq Kayani appears to be sensitive to the sentiment in the barracks, which is one of guilt about fighting the Taliban. Thus the NATO and U.S. attempts to shift the locus of the war to the Afghan-Pakistan border and the Pakistani tribal areas are meeting with resistance.
But the problem is also over the U.S.’s war strategy. To quote Mr. Kabulov, “There is no mistake made by the Soviet Union that was not repeated [by the U.S.] … Underestimation of the Afghan nation, the belief that we have superiority over the Afghans and that they are inferior and that they cannot be trusted to run the affairs … A lack of knowledge of the social and ethnic structure of this country; a lack of sufficient understanding of traditions and religion.” As he put it, NATO soldiers and officers “communicate with them [Afghans] from the barrels of guns in their bullet-proof Humvees.” Mr. Kabulov admitted that he couldn’t help having some satisfaction that those who once backed the mujahideen were now suffering in the same way the Soviet troops suffered.
Managing the Afghan war is not going to be easy for the U.S. The window of opportunity in 2001 was to go in with an overpowering force, annihilate the Taliban and get out quickly. Instead, Washington placated Pakistan by allowing the Taliban to escape, settle down in the Hindu Kush and create a surrogate regime that would serve its regional strategies. Now, the Taliban is back — “refit, retrained, and rearmed,” as the former CIA officer, Michael Scheuer, wrote. A winless situation is developing where the choice is between an interminable conflict — oscillating between killing and conciliation — and retreat in shame and agony. Either way, the path seems to be leading to a humiliating defeat.
(The writer is a former ambassador belonging to the Indian Foreign Service.)
Even an intrepid traveller will fail to realise the half-hour on the crowded highway leaving Peshawar, by when he is already in the Khyber Pass. The winding road stretches ahead for another 50 km until he reaches the summit at Landi Kotal, just inside Pakistan, after a lifetime journey through mountains and canyons of such staggering beauty that he loses track of time and space. And then a breathtaking decline commences, depositing him summarily at the border town of Torkham. The Khyber Pass simply envelops you with its charm.
The Khyber Agency has always presented in history and politics an intriguing turf of the great game. Indeed, the dispatches in the western media from the Khyber in the recent days proclaim one thing insistently: it is unfair to say Pakistan isn’t fighting the “war on terror,” and with such a committed ally on its side, there is no need for the NATO to bypass Islamabad and deal directly with the tribes.
The Khyber operation will help to blunt the United States and NATO criticism — for the time being, at least — that the Pakistan military easing pressure on the militants in the tribal areas in the recent weeks gave them more space to operate within Afghanistan. It has given high publicity to the operation. Influential western journalists have been taken to the frontline. But does the Khyber operation make a difference?
It must be seen for what it is — a thoughtful public relations exercise. Khyber’s brooding mountains come out with stunning effect on western television screens. During the Afghan jihad in the 1980s, ambitious American politicians almost invariably visited Peshawar for a “photo opportunity” in the Khyber in the company of handsome Afghan mujahideen.
In fact, the Pakistani military was not involved in last week’s operation before the expected arrival of U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher in Islamabad. The paramilitary Frontier Corps under the control of the North West Frontier Province government was in charge. A day into the operation, Major General Alam Khattak, head of the Frontier Corps, told Kathy Gannon of the Associated Press on the Afghan beat: “We have occupied, captured all important heights, and we have taken control of the area.”
If so, it was a historic feat. Ms Gannon promptly wrote: “The offensive in the Khyber tribal region marked the first major military action Pakistan’s newly elected government has taken against the militants operating in the tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan. The government had said it preferred to try to defuse tension with the groups through negotiations, but with threats by Islamic militants to the city of Peshawar growing in recent weeks, the military decided to take action. Khyber is also a key route for moving U.S. military supplies into neighbouring Afghanistan.”
But the “success” of the operation proves nothing — neither the Frontier Corps’ professionalism nor the future of militant activity. There was no fighting; there were no casualties; there was no capture of irreconcilable militants. Nothing changed hands. If anything, Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud turned more rowdyish, warning that he would “turn into furnace” Sindh and Punjab. Baloney, of course. The mystery of Mr. Mehsud deepens.
Meanwhile, the war rolls on inside Afghanistan. It has become much more serious. For a second successive month, more U.S. and NATO troops were killed in Afghanistan than in Iraq. In June, the number touched 44 in Afghanistan compared to 30 in Iraq. But statistics can never tell the whole story. At any rate, scores of Afghans are also getting killed on any single day in the rain of American bombs. The war is becoming indescribably mean. Britain’s Ministry of Defence admitted to the London Times the use of the controversial thermobaric weapon, Hellfire AGM-114N. When fired from Apache attack helicopters or predator drone aircraft, the missile sucks the air out of the Taliban’s chest, shreds his internal organs and crushes his body. He cannot take shelter, as the blast creates a human-crushing vacuum with a second explosion. He instantly disintegrates.
Britain’s MoD spokesman in London said: “We call it an enhanced blast weapon.” But the unfortunate part is the weapon — also known as vacuum bomb — cannot identify a Taliban fighter. At the end of the day, no wonder, the Taliban’s “area of influence … is constantly growing,” to quote Zamir Kabulov, Russia’s veteran Afghan specialist who is serving as ambassador in Kabul. He believes that the Taliban has influence in “more than half of Afghanistan’s territory and controls up to 20 per cent of that area.”
A Pentagon study, Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan, which was released in Washington DC last week, also depicted a “fragile” security environment in Afghanistan. The report anticipated that the “Taliban will also probably attempt to increase its presence in the west and north.” No doubt, the Taliban has infiltrated the Afghan security organs. An inquiry into the abortive attempt to assassinate President Hamid Karzai in Kabul in April as he sat on a podium with foreign dignitaries revealed that at least six Afghans blamed for the attack were government functionaries, including an army general.
Curiously, the Pentagon study did not identify threats emanating from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region as a primary security challenge facing the U.S. troops. Instead, it cited a weak Afghan government, a non-functioning economy, narcotics production and corruption as the main challenges. It admitted that the Taliban had “coalesced into a resilient insurgency,” and would likely “increase the scope and pace” of its activities. The study saw the possibility of “two distinct insurgencies” appearing — the Taliban-led insurgency in the south and a “more complex, adaptive insurgency” in the east by several groups — with mutual cooperation and coordination.
But the NATO member-countries resist Washington’s exhortations to step up their troop commitments. The U.S. military does not have the manpower to cover the shortfall. In a presentation recently, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen said: “The simple math is that I can’t put any more forces in Afghanistan until I come down in Iraq.” He said the U.S. troops were “pressed very hard” from multiple deployments to both Iraq and Afghanistan and keeping up the present operational tempo would be “impossible.” At the same time, Adm. Mullen pointed out that Afghanistan was “at the heart of NATO right now. And I believe that whether NATO is relevant in the future is tied directly to a positive outcome in Afghanistan.”
Clearly, the crunch time is coming in Afghanistan. Added to the crises there — ranging from corruption and misgovernance to the drug problem — and growing alienation of the people due to the increasingly barbarous military tactic adopted by the coalition forces, plus the inability of the NATO to step up troop presence, there is the inchoate factor, what the outgoing NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Dan K. McNeill, called the “dysfunctional” political situation in Pakistan. Diverse power centres
The reality is that whereas Pervez Musharraf and the Pakistani military took all decisions previously, diverse power centres have since emerged and there are fundamental differences over the insurgency. Across the board — both civilian and military — there is reluctance to use the military for counterinsurgency operations. Army chief Ashfaq Kayani appears to be sensitive to the sentiment in the barracks, which is one of guilt about fighting the Taliban. Thus the NATO and U.S. attempts to shift the locus of the war to the Afghan-Pakistan border and the Pakistani tribal areas are meeting with resistance.
But the problem is also over the U.S.’s war strategy. To quote Mr. Kabulov, “There is no mistake made by the Soviet Union that was not repeated [by the U.S.] … Underestimation of the Afghan nation, the belief that we have superiority over the Afghans and that they are inferior and that they cannot be trusted to run the affairs … A lack of knowledge of the social and ethnic structure of this country; a lack of sufficient understanding of traditions and religion.” As he put it, NATO soldiers and officers “communicate with them [Afghans] from the barrels of guns in their bullet-proof Humvees.” Mr. Kabulov admitted that he couldn’t help having some satisfaction that those who once backed the mujahideen were now suffering in the same way the Soviet troops suffered.
Managing the Afghan war is not going to be easy for the U.S. The window of opportunity in 2001 was to go in with an overpowering force, annihilate the Taliban and get out quickly. Instead, Washington placated Pakistan by allowing the Taliban to escape, settle down in the Hindu Kush and create a surrogate regime that would serve its regional strategies. Now, the Taliban is back — “refit, retrained, and rearmed,” as the former CIA officer, Michael Scheuer, wrote. A winless situation is developing where the choice is between an interminable conflict — oscillating between killing and conciliation — and retreat in shame and agony. Either way, the path seems to be leading to a humiliating defeat.
(The writer is a former ambassador belonging to the Indian Foreign Service.)
India - IIT Heads reject quota for Faculty
MUMBAI: IIT directors are doing a Venugopal. The seven IIT heads have expressed their dissent against implementing reservations for faculty appointments and have decided to wrestle with the Union HRD ministry over the issue, just like the former AIIMS boss who took on Health Minister S Ramadoss. On Friday, the directors who met in New Delhi at the meeting of the standing committee of the IIT council (SCIC), took a tough stand against the HRD ministry's recent order that there should be reservations for teaching posts in the IITs. "We are all against reservations for faculty appointments. The IIT council is now going to take up the matter with the ministry. We have demanded that IITs be considered on par with other institutes of national importance, where there are no such reservations," said a director on condition of anonymity. Another IIT director who did not want to be quoted said they had a "lengthy discussion on the issue of faculty reservations and the result was rather positive". Taking a tough stand, most directors vetoed faculty reservations and stated that the government should revoke the decision. Institutes of national importance include those like the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) and the Harish-Chandra Research Institute. The June 9 government diktat sent to all IITs states that 15%, 7.5% and 27% teaching positions be reserved for SC, ST and OBC categories respectively. Presently, IITs have reservations for backward category candidates only in administrative posts, from attendants to the level of deputy registrar. According to the order, posts must be reserved for lecturers and assistant professors in all subjects of science and technology. In other areas, like management, social sciences and humanities, reservations should be applied up to the professor level, the seniormost position. When contacted, M Anandakrishnan, chairman of the board of governors at IIT-Kanpur and also on the council, said he was not comfortable discussing the "internal matter" at this stage, as the issue was "extremely sensitive". Sources said the issue of faculty reservations was not taken up earlier by the IIT council and the order was thrust upon the directors by the ministry. Besides the seven directors and Anandakrishnan, SCIC also has C N R Rao, principal scientific adviser to the PM. The government's decision to have reservations for faculty in the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) has evoked strong, negative reactions from the alumni as well as current students. Some prominent alumni, now on the board of governors of various IITs, took up the matter individually with the respective directors, only to find that the issue had not even been discussed in the IIT Council and the decision was being thrust by the Union human resources development ministry. IIT-Bombay alumnus Nandan Nilekani said: "I think this is a very unfortunate decision. Matters of such strategic importance must be discussed in the IIT Council but, regrettably, the council has not met even once in the entire duration this government was in power." The government diktat to the IITs says 15%, 7.5% and 27% quota in teaching positions be reserved for the SC, ST and OBC categories, respectively, with immediate effect. The IITs currently have reservations for backward category candidates for their administrative posts, from attendants to the level of deputy registrar. Nilekani, who is on the IIT-B board of governors, feels that higher education in India needs a complete overhaul. "Momentous decisions are taken without consultation and communicated by junior bureaucrats. Our higher education needs a complete revamp, just like the 'licence permit raj' was lifted in 1991. The recommendations of the National Knowledge Commission on Higher Education should be implemented immediately." Nilekani, one of the founders of Infosys, who contributed a generous purse to his alma mater, said that he learnt the most important lessons of his life on the Powai campus. A senior professor from IIT-Delhi said several alumni have expressed their concerns and willingness to talk the issue out with the government. "Students, current and former, know that IITs are what they are because of the kind of teaching that goes on here. Faculty members are the pillars of the IITs and these institutions will crumble if they are recruited on the basis of anything but merit,’’ he said. Another alumnus, Mastek chairman Ashank Desai, pointed out that the IITs stood for excellence and they must be given the autonomy to bloom. Students and alumni are holding a candlelight protest march in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore on Saturday evening. "To be a faculty at IIT, you need to have a PhD. Some institutes even prefer candidates with at least five years of work experience. No one can remain poor after that. Reservation for faculty is a politically motivated decision and it will degrade the IIT system," IIT-B student Neeraj Jain said
Fun - Loving Amnesia
An elderly gent was invited to an old friend’s home for dinner. He was impressed by the way his friend preceded every request to his wife with endearing terms such as Honey, My love, Darling, Sweetheart, Pumpkin etc.
The couple had been married almost 70 years and clearly they were still very much in love. While the wife was in the kitchen, the man leaned over and said to his host, “I think it’s wonderful that, after all these years, you still call your wife those loving pet names.” The old man hung his head: “I have to tell you the truth,” he said. “Her name slipped my mind about 10 years ago and I'm scared to death to ask her what it is.”
The couple had been married almost 70 years and clearly they were still very much in love. While the wife was in the kitchen, the man leaned over and said to his host, “I think it’s wonderful that, after all these years, you still call your wife those loving pet names.” The old man hung his head: “I have to tell you the truth,” he said. “Her name slipped my mind about 10 years ago and I'm scared to death to ask her what it is.”
Columnist - Khushwant Singh
A matter of faith
It depends on what you mean by religion. If it is prayers most of which you do not understand but recite by rote, going to places of worship to be in the company of like-minded people, undertaking pilgrimages to places you regard holy, fasting on certain days, abstinence from sex, and abstaining from consuming some kinds of food or drink, my answer would be an emphatic ‘no’ because these practices are of no consequence: conforming to them does not make you a better human being. On the contrary, they prevent you from thinking for yourself. Sigmund Freud, the famous psychologist, was right in holding, “When a man is freed of religion, he has a better chance to live a normal and wholesome life.” Galileo, the celebrated astronomer, said the same thing many centuries earlier. “I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”
Abraham Lincoln put it succinctly: “When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That’s my religion.” How true! If you have to justify your words or actions, be sure your feeling good is flawed.
In the final analysis, everyone should make up his or her own religion and not unquestionably conform to the one he or she was born into. Since we do not know where we came from, belief in God as our Creator is optional. But there is no justification for calling Him just or merciful because there is little evidence of justice or mercy in our world. In earthquakes, tsunamis, cyclones, He takes lives of good and evil, believers and non-believers, old and young indiscriminately. All of which we describe as acts of God.
Why we are here is also an open question because we are not sure of the answer. All we can do is to teach ourselves how to live in peace with ourselves and get the best out of the faculties endowed to us without harming people among whom we live. This is not asking for too much and many people manage to live such lives.
What happens to us after we die should not be of much concern to us. There is no evidence whatsoever for believing in heaven, hell or re-incarnation. They are man-made fantasies to beguile ourselves.
It depends on what you mean by religion. If it is prayers most of which you do not understand but recite by rote, going to places of worship to be in the company of like-minded people, undertaking pilgrimages to places you regard holy, fasting on certain days, abstinence from sex, and abstaining from consuming some kinds of food or drink, my answer would be an emphatic ‘no’ because these practices are of no consequence: conforming to them does not make you a better human being. On the contrary, they prevent you from thinking for yourself. Sigmund Freud, the famous psychologist, was right in holding, “When a man is freed of religion, he has a better chance to live a normal and wholesome life.” Galileo, the celebrated astronomer, said the same thing many centuries earlier. “I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”
Abraham Lincoln put it succinctly: “When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That’s my religion.” How true! If you have to justify your words or actions, be sure your feeling good is flawed.
In the final analysis, everyone should make up his or her own religion and not unquestionably conform to the one he or she was born into. Since we do not know where we came from, belief in God as our Creator is optional. But there is no justification for calling Him just or merciful because there is little evidence of justice or mercy in our world. In earthquakes, tsunamis, cyclones, He takes lives of good and evil, believers and non-believers, old and young indiscriminately. All of which we describe as acts of God.
Why we are here is also an open question because we are not sure of the answer. All we can do is to teach ourselves how to live in peace with ourselves and get the best out of the faculties endowed to us without harming people among whom we live. This is not asking for too much and many people manage to live such lives.
What happens to us after we die should not be of much concern to us. There is no evidence whatsoever for believing in heaven, hell or re-incarnation. They are man-made fantasies to beguile ourselves.
Columnists - Barkha Dutt
Their time starts now
By the time this makes it to print, Amar Singh and Sonia Gandhi wo-uld have excha-nged awkward but polite pleasantries, perhaps over a cup of freshly brewed coffee. And the demons of the dinner that ended up being a political variation of the ‘Last Supper’ — a dinner where Amar Singh proclaimed that the Congress treated him worse than a “dog or a beggar”— would have finally been laid to rest.
The political drama of the past week was written to be performed as the theatre of the absurd. It had all the elements — manufactured conflict (when the Samajwadi Party pretends to be offended by the Congress); melodramatic proclamations of happily-ever-after love (when the Third Front says it is united); war cries raised by generals nervous about going to battle (when the Left keeps setting ominous deadlines which shift to the next week and the next week and the next); courtiers and viziers who claim to be loyal to the king but plot furiously to weaken him (talk to Congressmen off-camera and discover what they really say about the Prime Minister’s insistence on the nuclear deal).
Perhaps the most orchestrated moment in this obviously preordained script was when former President, Abdul Kalam, became the scientific ‘expert’ that Mulayam Singh Yadav and Amar Singh turned to for counsel. A senior Congress politician tipped us off on the outcome of the meeting before it had begun, with a complacent little chuckle. And while the Congress and the SP may splutter self-righteously against Mayawati for ‘communalising’ the discourse and making it about the Indian Muslim, it’s pretty obvious that they are just as worried themselves.
Yes, of course, Kalam is one of India’s foremost missile scientists and is easily the country’s best-loved President. But, surely we all know that there’s another reason that he was the perfect candidate. He’s Muslim and when he says the deal is in “national interest”, the two political parties hope it’s a powerful antidote to the reactionary clerics who argue otherwise. It’s the same political nervousness that has propelled the Congress into sudden public clarifications on the Iran pipeline and India’s refusal to send troops to Iraq. These are calculated illustrations, in the obvious hope that the Muslim voter (imagined erroneously as a monolith) is paying close attention. So, what’s slated for the next episode in this crazy soap opera? Well, to start with — ignore the bluster and the dramatic ultimatums — this story isn’t drawing to a close anytime soon. Here’s a glimpse of which way the script could unfold:
The Marxists (stunned and isolated by the SP’s sudden betrayal) may have set July 7 as a de facto deadline for the government to come out and clarify when exactly it plans to approach the International atomic energy Agency (IAEA). But that doesn’t mean the UPA will oblige them with a clear answer.
Instead, Congress strategists have another complicated card up their sleeves. Look out for a Parliament session convened within the next four-five weeks. Watch the PM win a confidence vote with the support of new friends from UP who will argue that their backing is more about keeping the BJP out and less about the nuclear deal. Be sure that the Congress will dither in public on spelling out any dates on when it plans to go to Vienna. Privately, party masterminds calculate that approaching the IAEA in August buys them enough time politically to iron out domestic creases. Then the attention turns to the Left. Will it bite the bait and pull out before all this is unveiled formally? Or will it end up being unwittingly (or perhaps knowingly) complicit in this complex survival plan and hang around and wait to be pushed into an even bigger and much lonelier corner?
There’s just one tiny, but crucial, piece missing in the puzzle — and that is the Americans. So far, a patient American administration has said it will wait till mid-January for the 123 agreement to reach its doorstep. But now, there are signs of exasperation and impatience. A visiting US Congressman has already warned that the ship may be “leaving the port in September.” If Washington decides to call off the lame-duck session of its Congress in December (that’s the Congress that would have convened after the elections), there’s virtually no chance of the deal becoming a reality during President Bush’s tenure. Despite proclaimed bipartisan support for the deal, it may be back to the drawing board with the new Democrats in place. Also, it is worth remembering that getting the safeguards agreement in place by September leaves very little time to get the support of the 45 countries in the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG). If China, or even Ireland, decides that they need more time to debate before signing off on the deal internally, India could well be in serious trouble. No wonder then that diplomats are already spin-doctoring stories on how the deal may not go through this year, but that doesn’t mean it is quite dead and buried.
In the meantime, a jittery Congress hasn’t forgotten the infamous day when Sonia Gandhi went to Rashtrapati Bhawan counting on the support of Mulayam Singh Yadav and Amar Singh, only to be abandoned at the very last moment. Her public claim of ‘272’ MPs would cause her endless embarrassment in the days and years to come. So, as the party nervously learns to be friends again with a hard-talking SP, enough leaders are privately lamenting that they have just switched walking sticks. First, the crutch was the Left, now it will be the SP. An alliance with the SP may have been an inevitable need for both parties in the next Lok Sabha elections, especially with Mayawati deserting the UPA ship. But in these circumstances of desperate need, the Congress has ended up giving the SP an easy upper hand.
As this drama draws to a messy, unstable denouement, there is one party smiling smugly in the corner: the BJP — watching and waiting for its moment in 2009.
By the time this makes it to print, Amar Singh and Sonia Gandhi wo-uld have excha-nged awkward but polite pleasantries, perhaps over a cup of freshly brewed coffee. And the demons of the dinner that ended up being a political variation of the ‘Last Supper’ — a dinner where Amar Singh proclaimed that the Congress treated him worse than a “dog or a beggar”— would have finally been laid to rest.
The political drama of the past week was written to be performed as the theatre of the absurd. It had all the elements — manufactured conflict (when the Samajwadi Party pretends to be offended by the Congress); melodramatic proclamations of happily-ever-after love (when the Third Front says it is united); war cries raised by generals nervous about going to battle (when the Left keeps setting ominous deadlines which shift to the next week and the next week and the next); courtiers and viziers who claim to be loyal to the king but plot furiously to weaken him (talk to Congressmen off-camera and discover what they really say about the Prime Minister’s insistence on the nuclear deal).
Perhaps the most orchestrated moment in this obviously preordained script was when former President, Abdul Kalam, became the scientific ‘expert’ that Mulayam Singh Yadav and Amar Singh turned to for counsel. A senior Congress politician tipped us off on the outcome of the meeting before it had begun, with a complacent little chuckle. And while the Congress and the SP may splutter self-righteously against Mayawati for ‘communalising’ the discourse and making it about the Indian Muslim, it’s pretty obvious that they are just as worried themselves.
Yes, of course, Kalam is one of India’s foremost missile scientists and is easily the country’s best-loved President. But, surely we all know that there’s another reason that he was the perfect candidate. He’s Muslim and when he says the deal is in “national interest”, the two political parties hope it’s a powerful antidote to the reactionary clerics who argue otherwise. It’s the same political nervousness that has propelled the Congress into sudden public clarifications on the Iran pipeline and India’s refusal to send troops to Iraq. These are calculated illustrations, in the obvious hope that the Muslim voter (imagined erroneously as a monolith) is paying close attention. So, what’s slated for the next episode in this crazy soap opera? Well, to start with — ignore the bluster and the dramatic ultimatums — this story isn’t drawing to a close anytime soon. Here’s a glimpse of which way the script could unfold:
The Marxists (stunned and isolated by the SP’s sudden betrayal) may have set July 7 as a de facto deadline for the government to come out and clarify when exactly it plans to approach the International atomic energy Agency (IAEA). But that doesn’t mean the UPA will oblige them with a clear answer.
Instead, Congress strategists have another complicated card up their sleeves. Look out for a Parliament session convened within the next four-five weeks. Watch the PM win a confidence vote with the support of new friends from UP who will argue that their backing is more about keeping the BJP out and less about the nuclear deal. Be sure that the Congress will dither in public on spelling out any dates on when it plans to go to Vienna. Privately, party masterminds calculate that approaching the IAEA in August buys them enough time politically to iron out domestic creases. Then the attention turns to the Left. Will it bite the bait and pull out before all this is unveiled formally? Or will it end up being unwittingly (or perhaps knowingly) complicit in this complex survival plan and hang around and wait to be pushed into an even bigger and much lonelier corner?
There’s just one tiny, but crucial, piece missing in the puzzle — and that is the Americans. So far, a patient American administration has said it will wait till mid-January for the 123 agreement to reach its doorstep. But now, there are signs of exasperation and impatience. A visiting US Congressman has already warned that the ship may be “leaving the port in September.” If Washington decides to call off the lame-duck session of its Congress in December (that’s the Congress that would have convened after the elections), there’s virtually no chance of the deal becoming a reality during President Bush’s tenure. Despite proclaimed bipartisan support for the deal, it may be back to the drawing board with the new Democrats in place. Also, it is worth remembering that getting the safeguards agreement in place by September leaves very little time to get the support of the 45 countries in the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG). If China, or even Ireland, decides that they need more time to debate before signing off on the deal internally, India could well be in serious trouble. No wonder then that diplomats are already spin-doctoring stories on how the deal may not go through this year, but that doesn’t mean it is quite dead and buried.
In the meantime, a jittery Congress hasn’t forgotten the infamous day when Sonia Gandhi went to Rashtrapati Bhawan counting on the support of Mulayam Singh Yadav and Amar Singh, only to be abandoned at the very last moment. Her public claim of ‘272’ MPs would cause her endless embarrassment in the days and years to come. So, as the party nervously learns to be friends again with a hard-talking SP, enough leaders are privately lamenting that they have just switched walking sticks. First, the crutch was the Left, now it will be the SP. An alliance with the SP may have been an inevitable need for both parties in the next Lok Sabha elections, especially with Mayawati deserting the UPA ship. But in these circumstances of desperate need, the Congress has ended up giving the SP an easy upper hand.
As this drama draws to a messy, unstable denouement, there is one party smiling smugly in the corner: the BJP — watching and waiting for its moment in 2009.
Health* - Want Viagra Effect, Eat Watermelons
Do Note - Health would be a new keyword to our existing list
HOUSTON: Thinking of spicing up your sex life with Viagra? You may not need the blue pill as the answer may lie in a cool and refreshing passion fruit -- watermelon.
According to an Indian American scientist in Texas, water melon has an ingredient that delivers Viagra-like effects to the body's blood vessels and may even increase libido.
The citrulline, found in the flesh and rind of the fruit, triggers off a compound that helps blood vessels in human body relax -- an effect similar to that of Viagra, Dr Bhimu Patil, director of Texas A&M's Fruit and Vegetable Improvement Centre has found.
When watermelons are consumed in large quantities, the citrulline in it reacts with enzymes in the body. It changes into an amino acid called Arginine, known to benefit the heart, circulatory system as well as the immune system.
"The more we study watermelons, the more we realize just how amazing a fruit it is in providing natural enhancers to the human body," said Patil.
"We've always known that watermelon is good, but the list of its very important healthful benefits grows longer with each study."
Beneficial ingredients in fruits and vegetables are known as phyto-nutrients, naturally occurring compounds that react with the human body to trigger healthy reactions, Patil said.
In watermelons, these include lycopene, beta carotene and citrulline, whose beneficial functions are now being unraveled. Among them is the ability to relax blood vessels, much like Viagra does.
"The citrulline-arginine relationship helps the immune system, heart health and may prove to be helpful for those who suffer from obesity and type 2 diabetes," Patil said.
"Arginine boosts nitric oxide, which relaxes blood vessels, the same basic effect that Viagra has, to treat erectile dysfunction and maybe even prevent it."
While there are many psychological and physiological problems that can cause impotence, extra nitric oxide could help those who need increased blood flow, which would also help treat angina, high blood pressure and other cardiovascular problems.
"Watermelon may not be as organ specific as Viagra," Patil said, "but it's a great way to relax blood vessels without any drug side-effects," the researcher said.
The benefits of watermelon don't end there, he said. Arginine also helps the urea cycle by removing ammonia and other toxic compounds from our bodies.
Citrulline, the precursor to arginine, is found in higher concentrations in the rind of watermelons than in the flesh. As the rind is not commonly eaten, two of Patil's fellow scientists, are working to breed new varieties with higher concentrations in the flesh.
In addition to the research by Texas A&M, watermelon's phyto-nutrients are being studied by the US Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service in Lane, Oklahoma.
As an added bonus, these studies have also shown that deep red varieties of watermelon have displaced the tomato as the lycopene king, Patil said.
Almost 92 per cent of watermelon is water, but the remaining 8 per cent is loaded with lycopene, an anti-oxidant that protects the human heart, prostate and skin health. "Lycopene, which is also found in red grapefruit, was historically thought to exist only in tomatoes," he said. "But now we know that it's found in higher concentrations in red watermelon varieties."
HOUSTON: Thinking of spicing up your sex life with Viagra? You may not need the blue pill as the answer may lie in a cool and refreshing passion fruit -- watermelon.
According to an Indian American scientist in Texas, water melon has an ingredient that delivers Viagra-like effects to the body's blood vessels and may even increase libido.
The citrulline, found in the flesh and rind of the fruit, triggers off a compound that helps blood vessels in human body relax -- an effect similar to that of Viagra, Dr Bhimu Patil, director of Texas A&M's Fruit and Vegetable Improvement Centre has found.
When watermelons are consumed in large quantities, the citrulline in it reacts with enzymes in the body. It changes into an amino acid called Arginine, known to benefit the heart, circulatory system as well as the immune system.
"The more we study watermelons, the more we realize just how amazing a fruit it is in providing natural enhancers to the human body," said Patil.
"We've always known that watermelon is good, but the list of its very important healthful benefits grows longer with each study."
Beneficial ingredients in fruits and vegetables are known as phyto-nutrients, naturally occurring compounds that react with the human body to trigger healthy reactions, Patil said.
In watermelons, these include lycopene, beta carotene and citrulline, whose beneficial functions are now being unraveled. Among them is the ability to relax blood vessels, much like Viagra does.
"The citrulline-arginine relationship helps the immune system, heart health and may prove to be helpful for those who suffer from obesity and type 2 diabetes," Patil said.
"Arginine boosts nitric oxide, which relaxes blood vessels, the same basic effect that Viagra has, to treat erectile dysfunction and maybe even prevent it."
While there are many psychological and physiological problems that can cause impotence, extra nitric oxide could help those who need increased blood flow, which would also help treat angina, high blood pressure and other cardiovascular problems.
"Watermelon may not be as organ specific as Viagra," Patil said, "but it's a great way to relax blood vessels without any drug side-effects," the researcher said.
The benefits of watermelon don't end there, he said. Arginine also helps the urea cycle by removing ammonia and other toxic compounds from our bodies.
Citrulline, the precursor to arginine, is found in higher concentrations in the rind of watermelons than in the flesh. As the rind is not commonly eaten, two of Patil's fellow scientists, are working to breed new varieties with higher concentrations in the flesh.
In addition to the research by Texas A&M, watermelon's phyto-nutrients are being studied by the US Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service in Lane, Oklahoma.
As an added bonus, these studies have also shown that deep red varieties of watermelon have displaced the tomato as the lycopene king, Patil said.
Almost 92 per cent of watermelon is water, but the remaining 8 per cent is loaded with lycopene, an anti-oxidant that protects the human heart, prostate and skin health. "Lycopene, which is also found in red grapefruit, was historically thought to exist only in tomatoes," he said. "But now we know that it's found in higher concentrations in red watermelon varieties."
Sport - The Nirmal Shekar Column
London: They come and go, day after day, year after year; some cocky, others almost worshipful, a few daring to believe the impossible, a good majority almost reverential and happily reconciled to their fate.
Names change. Mannerisms change. Years roll on. The climate, too, changes. Species go extinct. Everything changes.
But for one man, time stands still. And the ones who pay him a visit in his spiritual home — the Centre Court at the All England Lawn Tennis Club — the so-called rivals, are no more than pieces of statistics.
In the men’s singles semifinals of the 122nd Wimbledon championships, on Friday, Marat Safin was either No. 40 or No. 65, depending on whether you were referring to Roger Federer’s winning streak in SW 19 or his unbeaten run on grass.
For, the players that Federer is really competing against are now contented fathers living the good life, more concerned about their golf handicap rather than anything to do with tennis; some are even grandfathers, sitting by the fireplace and softly telling their grandchildren about their exploits at the greatest of tennis championships.
Pete Sampras, Bjorn Borg, Rod Laver — these are names draped in the golden glow of history, and these are the only ones that matter now to Federer after he played himself into his sixth straight final with a bloodless 6-3, 7-6(3), 6-4 victory over Safin.
In fact, Federer’s real opponent — the man with whom he shares the Wimbledon record of five straight titles — was sitting in the Royal Box on Friday.
When Borg was at this stage in his career, he would have hardly known that his next opponent would be the one that would stop his glorious run and, not much later, end his career too.
John Patrick McEnroe outplayed Borg in four sets in 1981, a year after losing a five-set epic to the great Swede. A left-hander in the form of his life stopping a serial-winner on the famous lawns.
Well, history could repeat itself on Sunday. And it is entirely up to Rafael Nadal, Federer’s only worthy opponent among the active players on grass, to make sure that it does.Substantial challenge
The four-time French champion’s game did not scale the dizzy heights that it did in the earlier round against Andy Murray. But Nadal still handled the surprisingly substantial challenge posed by the German journeyman Rainer Schuettler rather well for a 6-1, 7-6(3), 6-4 victory to set up a dream final against Federer for a third year in a row.
“Today wasn’t my best match,” admitted Nadal who, perhaps, underestimated his opponent. “I have to play my best tennis in the final (to beat Federer). That is the only way,” he said.
After being humiliated in the first set in just over 20 minutes, Schuettler broke Nadal’s serve with a forehand crosscourt pass in the third game of the second and found himself serving for the set in the 10th game.
But the pugilistic Spaniard broke back to 5-5, raced through the tie-break, and found an early break in the third.
As awe-inspiring as his Wimbledon record is, Federer, too, has often looked below his best in this championship. It is just that nobody has been good enough to take advantage of that.
If the champion is yet to lose a set this fortnight, then this has as much to do with his serving might as with the ineptitude of the opponents. After promising so much, Safin played a rather poor match on Friday.
Three years ago, in the semifinals of the Australian Open in Melbourne, the lofty Russian had beaten Federer in a five-set thriller, fighting off a matchpoint with a fantastic lob and then holding his nerve to go through.
Safin then outplayed Lleyton Hewitt to win his second Grand Slam title. On Friday, the Safin who played Federer bore little resemblance to that giant warrior as a competitor. He gave too much away too soon, losing his opening service game, a pair of nervous forehands sailing well beyond the lines.
Federer is such a great front-runner that when a tricky opponent shows such signs of weaknesses, he quickly drives through. The champion lost just four points on serve in the first set. And it wasn’t until midway in the second that Safin found his first opportunity to break Federer’s serve.
But on a day when he served well for the most part, hitting 14 aces, Federer quickly recovered to fight off two breakpoints in the fourth game. Safin himself saved one in the seventh to take the set into a tie-break.
It was here that the Russian surrendered in a hurry. Three backhand errors — all of them unforced — saw Federer go up 4-1. Less than three minutes on, Safin was staring down the barrel.
With Safin serving to stay in the match in the 10th game of the third set, Federer grabbed his first opportunity to close out the match, with a backhand crosscourt pass.
Asked what he would say to the critics who thought he was vulnerable this year, Federer said, “Don’t write me off quickly. This is my part of the season.”Paes-Dlouhy pair loses
India’s Leander Paes and his Czech partner Lukas Dlouhy lost a five-set thriller to the second seeded Daniel Nestor (Canada) and Nenad Zimonjic (Serbia) in the men’s doubles semifinals.
In a match that was suspended midway in the third set in gathering gloom on Thursday night, Paes and Dlouhy did well to battle back and take the fourth set after being routed in the third.
But Nestor and Zimonjic broke serve in the 13th game before the Canadian served out the match in the next for a 7-6(4), 4-6, 6-1, 4-6, 8-6 victory.
Names change. Mannerisms change. Years roll on. The climate, too, changes. Species go extinct. Everything changes.
But for one man, time stands still. And the ones who pay him a visit in his spiritual home — the Centre Court at the All England Lawn Tennis Club — the so-called rivals, are no more than pieces of statistics.
In the men’s singles semifinals of the 122nd Wimbledon championships, on Friday, Marat Safin was either No. 40 or No. 65, depending on whether you were referring to Roger Federer’s winning streak in SW 19 or his unbeaten run on grass.
For, the players that Federer is really competing against are now contented fathers living the good life, more concerned about their golf handicap rather than anything to do with tennis; some are even grandfathers, sitting by the fireplace and softly telling their grandchildren about their exploits at the greatest of tennis championships.
Pete Sampras, Bjorn Borg, Rod Laver — these are names draped in the golden glow of history, and these are the only ones that matter now to Federer after he played himself into his sixth straight final with a bloodless 6-3, 7-6(3), 6-4 victory over Safin.
In fact, Federer’s real opponent — the man with whom he shares the Wimbledon record of five straight titles — was sitting in the Royal Box on Friday.
When Borg was at this stage in his career, he would have hardly known that his next opponent would be the one that would stop his glorious run and, not much later, end his career too.
John Patrick McEnroe outplayed Borg in four sets in 1981, a year after losing a five-set epic to the great Swede. A left-hander in the form of his life stopping a serial-winner on the famous lawns.
Well, history could repeat itself on Sunday. And it is entirely up to Rafael Nadal, Federer’s only worthy opponent among the active players on grass, to make sure that it does.Substantial challenge
The four-time French champion’s game did not scale the dizzy heights that it did in the earlier round against Andy Murray. But Nadal still handled the surprisingly substantial challenge posed by the German journeyman Rainer Schuettler rather well for a 6-1, 7-6(3), 6-4 victory to set up a dream final against Federer for a third year in a row.
“Today wasn’t my best match,” admitted Nadal who, perhaps, underestimated his opponent. “I have to play my best tennis in the final (to beat Federer). That is the only way,” he said.
After being humiliated in the first set in just over 20 minutes, Schuettler broke Nadal’s serve with a forehand crosscourt pass in the third game of the second and found himself serving for the set in the 10th game.
But the pugilistic Spaniard broke back to 5-5, raced through the tie-break, and found an early break in the third.
As awe-inspiring as his Wimbledon record is, Federer, too, has often looked below his best in this championship. It is just that nobody has been good enough to take advantage of that.
If the champion is yet to lose a set this fortnight, then this has as much to do with his serving might as with the ineptitude of the opponents. After promising so much, Safin played a rather poor match on Friday.
Three years ago, in the semifinals of the Australian Open in Melbourne, the lofty Russian had beaten Federer in a five-set thriller, fighting off a matchpoint with a fantastic lob and then holding his nerve to go through.
Safin then outplayed Lleyton Hewitt to win his second Grand Slam title. On Friday, the Safin who played Federer bore little resemblance to that giant warrior as a competitor. He gave too much away too soon, losing his opening service game, a pair of nervous forehands sailing well beyond the lines.
Federer is such a great front-runner that when a tricky opponent shows such signs of weaknesses, he quickly drives through. The champion lost just four points on serve in the first set. And it wasn’t until midway in the second that Safin found his first opportunity to break Federer’s serve.
But on a day when he served well for the most part, hitting 14 aces, Federer quickly recovered to fight off two breakpoints in the fourth game. Safin himself saved one in the seventh to take the set into a tie-break.
It was here that the Russian surrendered in a hurry. Three backhand errors — all of them unforced — saw Federer go up 4-1. Less than three minutes on, Safin was staring down the barrel.
With Safin serving to stay in the match in the 10th game of the third set, Federer grabbed his first opportunity to close out the match, with a backhand crosscourt pass.
Asked what he would say to the critics who thought he was vulnerable this year, Federer said, “Don’t write me off quickly. This is my part of the season.”Paes-Dlouhy pair loses
India’s Leander Paes and his Czech partner Lukas Dlouhy lost a five-set thriller to the second seeded Daniel Nestor (Canada) and Nenad Zimonjic (Serbia) in the men’s doubles semifinals.
In a match that was suspended midway in the third set in gathering gloom on Thursday night, Paes and Dlouhy did well to battle back and take the fourth set after being routed in the third.
But Nestor and Zimonjic broke serve in the 13th game before the Canadian served out the match in the next for a 7-6(4), 4-6, 6-1, 4-6, 8-6 victory.
Jul 4, 2008
Entertainment - People magazine
PEOPLE, The World's # 1 Celebrity Magazine launches in India
MUMBAI: Outlook Group launches PEOPLE, the world's leading celebrity news magazine, in India under a licensing agreement with Time Inc. Time Inc. is the largest magazine publisher in the United States.
With the India edition, PEOPLE makes its overseas debut as a fortnightly national celebrity news magazine. Priced at Rs 30, the first issue [114 pages] will be launched nationwide on 4 July, 2008.
PEOPLE revolutionized personality journalism in 1974 and is today the world's most successful and popular magazine. Every week, the PEOPLE brand in the United States brings more than 43 million consumers the latest news, exclusive interviews and in-depth reporting on the most compelling people of our time. PEOPLE India will be a fortnightly magazine. It will be a celebrity news magazine that will showcase 'Extraordinary People ' and 'Extraordinary Stories'. The first issue will be available on newsstands July 04, 2008 nationally.
Mr. Indranil, President, Outlook Group, while announcing the launch said, "We are delighted to be associated with Time Inc, one of the world's largest magazine publishers and to bring PEOPLE's unique editorial mix to India. The launch of PEOPLE will actually create a new genre, which is the "celebrity news magazine".
"The economic growth and opportunity in India right now makes this an ideal time to bring one of Time Inc's signature brands into the country," said Mr. Jim Jacovides, Vice President, Licensing and Syndication, Time Inc. Mr. Jacovides group is responsible for the licensing and syndication of Time Inc.'s leading brands globally. "We are pleased to add PEOPLE to our roster of 35 international editions published under license. "
Ms. Saira Menezes, Editor, PEOPLE in India, said, "We hope to be the biggest, most credible source of information on the people you want to know and the moment that shapes their lives. PEOPLE strives to tell stories that resonate, tell them well and to be at the same time fair, objective, factual and true."
MUMBAI: Outlook Group launches PEOPLE, the world's leading celebrity news magazine, in India under a licensing agreement with Time Inc. Time Inc. is the largest magazine publisher in the United States.
With the India edition, PEOPLE makes its overseas debut as a fortnightly national celebrity news magazine. Priced at Rs 30, the first issue [114 pages] will be launched nationwide on 4 July, 2008.
PEOPLE revolutionized personality journalism in 1974 and is today the world's most successful and popular magazine. Every week, the PEOPLE brand in the United States brings more than 43 million consumers the latest news, exclusive interviews and in-depth reporting on the most compelling people of our time. PEOPLE India will be a fortnightly magazine. It will be a celebrity news magazine that will showcase 'Extraordinary People ' and 'Extraordinary Stories'. The first issue will be available on newsstands July 04, 2008 nationally.
Mr. Indranil, President, Outlook Group, while announcing the launch said, "We are delighted to be associated with Time Inc, one of the world's largest magazine publishers and to bring PEOPLE's unique editorial mix to India. The launch of PEOPLE will actually create a new genre, which is the "celebrity news magazine".
"The economic growth and opportunity in India right now makes this an ideal time to bring one of Time Inc's signature brands into the country," said Mr. Jim Jacovides, Vice President, Licensing and Syndication, Time Inc. Mr. Jacovides group is responsible for the licensing and syndication of Time Inc.'s leading brands globally. "We are pleased to add PEOPLE to our roster of 35 international editions published under license. "
Ms. Saira Menezes, Editor, PEOPLE in India, said, "We hope to be the biggest, most credible source of information on the people you want to know and the moment that shapes their lives. PEOPLE strives to tell stories that resonate, tell them well and to be at the same time fair, objective, factual and true."
Entertainment - Mahaabhaarat
9X ropes in three co-sponsors for Mahaabhaarat
MUMBAI: INX Media’s Hindi general entertainment channel (GEC) 9X has roped in three sponsors for its mega-budget mythological Kahaani Hamaaray Mahaabhaarat Ki, which is launching on 7 July at 9 pm.
The three sponsors include Airtel, ITC Personal Care and Max New York Life Insurance. Produced by Ektaa Kapoor’s Balaji Telefilms, the show will mark the entry of the soap queen into the mytho genre.
INX Media group director sales Probal Ganguly says, “We are offering four slots. Three advertisers - Airtel, Max New York Life Insurance and ITC Personal Care - have already come on board. We are in talks for the remaining one slot.”
Ganguly adds: “Our strategy is different for Mahaabhaarat. We will wait and see the market response before announcing the rate card. Moreover as it is a half-hour daily, we do not want to clutter the space. The four slots are booked for 13 weeks. However, you may see some packages being rolled out in-between,” adds Ganguly.
MUMBAI: INX Media’s Hindi general entertainment channel (GEC) 9X has roped in three sponsors for its mega-budget mythological Kahaani Hamaaray Mahaabhaarat Ki, which is launching on 7 July at 9 pm.
The three sponsors include Airtel, ITC Personal Care and Max New York Life Insurance. Produced by Ektaa Kapoor’s Balaji Telefilms, the show will mark the entry of the soap queen into the mytho genre.
INX Media group director sales Probal Ganguly says, “We are offering four slots. Three advertisers - Airtel, Max New York Life Insurance and ITC Personal Care - have already come on board. We are in talks for the remaining one slot.”
Ganguly adds: “Our strategy is different for Mahaabhaarat. We will wait and see the market response before announcing the rate card. Moreover as it is a half-hour daily, we do not want to clutter the space. The four slots are booked for 13 weeks. However, you may see some packages being rolled out in-between,” adds Ganguly.
Entertainment - US Preferences
US prefers consuming content on TV than online: Nielsen
Despite the growing popularity of viewing television content online, most American adults (94 per cent) who subscribe to cable or satellite television services prefer to watch television on traditional TV sets, according to a Nielsen study.
The report is based on a study that Nielsen conducted for the Cable and Telecommunications Association for Marketing (Ctam).
One-third of the adult broadband users (35 per cent), surveyed for the study said that they watched at least one television programme originally shown on TV via the Internet. Of those who sought out video content online, 87 per cent watched television programs directly from a TV network website.
Further, 82 per cent of those who watched video content online reported that they went online to find a specific television program that they had missed when it first aired on TV.
This indicates the critical importance of strong marketing for the initial TV showing and the success that major networks are having by taking popular programmes to the online platform.
According to the study, online television viewers are not only catching up on their favourite shows, but nearly 40 per cent report using the Internet to get the scoop on actors and upcoming episodes.
As far as the online TV viewers are concerned, 39 per cent have read background info about a show's cast member, says the report.
38 per cent have viewed a show's preview. 37 per cent have read background info about the show or the show's characters. 27 per cent have viewed a behind-the-scenes video clip. Asked to choose among 17 online content categories, online television viewers said they prefer to watch shorter video clips when they go online. This specifically includes movie trailers (53 per cent), user generated videos (45 per cent), music videos and general news segments (37 per cent), comedy programmes (31 per cent), and sports clips (31 per cent).
Ctam president and CEO Char Beales says, "Tracking how consumer behaviour is changing as a result of new television viewing platforms is critical to our business. As preferences are made clear through research, cable companies and content providers evolve the product mix to best suit viewers' needs and desires."
"With so many viewing options now available via digital technology, it's more important than ever to understand how people are consuming media. This analysis shows a continuing strong appetite for watching television the traditional way even as viewers begin to extend their viewing to the personal computer," Nielsen executive VP Susan Whiting added.
In general, the study found that people are spending more time online each week than they were two years ago. More than half of the respondents (51 per cent) reported being online for at least three hours a week last year. In 2005, just 41 per cent of those surveyed said they spent three or more hours online per week.
Nielsen and Ctam's analysis also found growth among services associated with traditional television set viewing. For example, respondents' knowledge and usage of video-on-demand services increased substantially between 2005 and 2007. Free-on-demand programs and movies also experienced a significant jump in usage from 49 per cent in 2005 to 71 per cent in 2007, while paid-on-demand usage increased from 46 per cent to 55 per cent.
Other key findings from the report include:
HDTV subscribers are exceptionally loyal: Of those respondents who own HDTV sets, two-fifths (41 per cent) subscribe to a high-definition programming service. These subscribers report making it a point to watch high-definition programs every time (20 per cent) or most of the time (45 per cent) they watch television.
Digital cable and HDTV are poised for further growth: Interest in digital cable and HDTV sets is strong among respondents currently without these services or devices. Those interested in digital cable jumped from nine per cent to 20 per cent and from 18 per cent to 28 per cent for high definition TV sets from 2005 to 2007.
Viewers are accessing TV content via new media platforms: Small, but significant, percentages of respondents reported watching television via desktop computers (14 per cent), laptops (nine per cent), video-enabled mobile phones (6 per cent), or other portable video players (5 per cent).
Portable video platforms are slowly gaining popularity: While a large per cent (82 per cent) of adults in this study own a mobile phone, only seven per cent subscribe to a video downloading service. Of those respondents who own a video iPod, 35 per cent have never watched a video on it, 16 per cent watch videos two or three times a month, 14 per cent watch videos once a week, and nine per cent watch videos daily via iPod.
Despite the growing popularity of viewing television content online, most American adults (94 per cent) who subscribe to cable or satellite television services prefer to watch television on traditional TV sets, according to a Nielsen study.
The report is based on a study that Nielsen conducted for the Cable and Telecommunications Association for Marketing (Ctam).
One-third of the adult broadband users (35 per cent), surveyed for the study said that they watched at least one television programme originally shown on TV via the Internet. Of those who sought out video content online, 87 per cent watched television programs directly from a TV network website.
Further, 82 per cent of those who watched video content online reported that they went online to find a specific television program that they had missed when it first aired on TV.
This indicates the critical importance of strong marketing for the initial TV showing and the success that major networks are having by taking popular programmes to the online platform.
According to the study, online television viewers are not only catching up on their favourite shows, but nearly 40 per cent report using the Internet to get the scoop on actors and upcoming episodes.
As far as the online TV viewers are concerned, 39 per cent have read background info about a show's cast member, says the report.
38 per cent have viewed a show's preview. 37 per cent have read background info about the show or the show's characters. 27 per cent have viewed a behind-the-scenes video clip. Asked to choose among 17 online content categories, online television viewers said they prefer to watch shorter video clips when they go online. This specifically includes movie trailers (53 per cent), user generated videos (45 per cent), music videos and general news segments (37 per cent), comedy programmes (31 per cent), and sports clips (31 per cent).
Ctam president and CEO Char Beales says, "Tracking how consumer behaviour is changing as a result of new television viewing platforms is critical to our business. As preferences are made clear through research, cable companies and content providers evolve the product mix to best suit viewers' needs and desires."
"With so many viewing options now available via digital technology, it's more important than ever to understand how people are consuming media. This analysis shows a continuing strong appetite for watching television the traditional way even as viewers begin to extend their viewing to the personal computer," Nielsen executive VP Susan Whiting added.
In general, the study found that people are spending more time online each week than they were two years ago. More than half of the respondents (51 per cent) reported being online for at least three hours a week last year. In 2005, just 41 per cent of those surveyed said they spent three or more hours online per week.
Nielsen and Ctam's analysis also found growth among services associated with traditional television set viewing. For example, respondents' knowledge and usage of video-on-demand services increased substantially between 2005 and 2007. Free-on-demand programs and movies also experienced a significant jump in usage from 49 per cent in 2005 to 71 per cent in 2007, while paid-on-demand usage increased from 46 per cent to 55 per cent.
Other key findings from the report include:
HDTV subscribers are exceptionally loyal: Of those respondents who own HDTV sets, two-fifths (41 per cent) subscribe to a high-definition programming service. These subscribers report making it a point to watch high-definition programs every time (20 per cent) or most of the time (45 per cent) they watch television.
Digital cable and HDTV are poised for further growth: Interest in digital cable and HDTV sets is strong among respondents currently without these services or devices. Those interested in digital cable jumped from nine per cent to 20 per cent and from 18 per cent to 28 per cent for high definition TV sets from 2005 to 2007.
Viewers are accessing TV content via new media platforms: Small, but significant, percentages of respondents reported watching television via desktop computers (14 per cent), laptops (nine per cent), video-enabled mobile phones (6 per cent), or other portable video players (5 per cent).
Portable video platforms are slowly gaining popularity: While a large per cent (82 per cent) of adults in this study own a mobile phone, only seven per cent subscribe to a video downloading service. Of those respondents who own a video iPod, 35 per cent have never watched a video on it, 16 per cent watch videos two or three times a month, 14 per cent watch videos once a week, and nine per cent watch videos daily via iPod.
Marketing - Admen write soap operas in sachets
Admen write soap operas in sachets to cut through clutter
Rising ad clutter on television and growing consumer scepticism towards advertising are forcing some big advertisers to think out of the box for delivering their brand messages in a more engaging and compelling formats.First, it was the Hindustan Unilever’s Pond’s episodic commercial narrating the tale of three characters—played by Saif Ali Khan, Neha Dhupia and Priyanka Chopra—while launching its new White Beauty range. Now, it is Idea Cellular TV ads telling the story of education in a village through Abhishek Bachchan, the priest. Moving beyond a typical 30-second format, these first rush of ‘next generation’ ads are more than just commercials. They’re more like soap operas in sachets, complete with a storyline and characters, with brand message an integral part of the narrative. In one sense, these story-like ad capsules are yet another step in Indian marketers journey towards branded-content—whether stealthily riding on ‘proper’ programming to get the message across to the audience (brand placements in films and TV serials) or making paid-advertising cover itself in story garb for better brand salience and traction. Ad-spend on mobile space set to grow exponentially “What an idea!”. You might have articulated these words while being tuned to the new Idea commercial launched in a phased manner. The first phase was a 10-second teaser, in which Abhishek Bachchan sat and wondered how he can educate all the children in the country. The commercial ended with him looking up and saying, ‘idea’. The main campaign, a 90-second commercial, launched a few days later opens with a village girl being denied admission in a school, as there are no vacancies. Bachchan, the principal of the school, hits upon the ‘idea’ of starting mobile classrooms in villages. In villages, children gather around a mobile to get their lessons while teachers in the school have mobiles on their desks. The two-way communication enables teachers to teach both sets of students.Advertisers see storytelling in phases an exciting way of generating interest for the product. The creative agency for the Idea campaign is Lowe India. Lowe India chairman and national creative director R Balakrishnan says: “The idea behind the commercial is not just relationship building as people largely interpret. We wanted to break away from the clutter and we did so by having Abhishek Bachchan playing different characters and telling a tale instead of playing himself.” Ogilvy & Mather India chairman & national creative director Piyush Pandey says: “Staging ads in several parts enhance curiosity among audience. Such a technique helps in hooking the audience to the brand for long.” Agrees Mudra Max president Chandradeep Mitra: “Weaving out stories around the product provides image to the brand. Conveying social message through the commercial gives rise to positivism.” A week or two ago, HUL’s Pond’s left TV viewers confused with its latest Pond’s commercial. Anyone can mistake the ad for a Bollywood film trailer—filmmaker Shoojit Sircar’s Kabhi Kabhi Pyar Mein—starring Saif Ali Khan, Priyanka and Neha Dhupia. However, it turned out to be a commercial for Pond’s, with characters and the plot entwined well with the brand proposition. “A breakthrough technology needed a breakthrough communication and hence it was decided to come out with an episodic format of communication. The idea was to convey the proposition of the brand in an interesting manner for the consumer,” says HUL spokesperson. Globally, Coca-Cola has set the best example of bonding with consumers through wonderful stories in its ads. The campaign, Happiness Factory, uses animated characters to tell a modern fairy tale that no way resembles a regular ad. The ad not only won several awards but also became a part of Second Life, the popular virtual world game.
Rising ad clutter on television and growing consumer scepticism towards advertising are forcing some big advertisers to think out of the box for delivering their brand messages in a more engaging and compelling formats.First, it was the Hindustan Unilever’s Pond’s episodic commercial narrating the tale of three characters—played by Saif Ali Khan, Neha Dhupia and Priyanka Chopra—while launching its new White Beauty range. Now, it is Idea Cellular TV ads telling the story of education in a village through Abhishek Bachchan, the priest. Moving beyond a typical 30-second format, these first rush of ‘next generation’ ads are more than just commercials. They’re more like soap operas in sachets, complete with a storyline and characters, with brand message an integral part of the narrative. In one sense, these story-like ad capsules are yet another step in Indian marketers journey towards branded-content—whether stealthily riding on ‘proper’ programming to get the message across to the audience (brand placements in films and TV serials) or making paid-advertising cover itself in story garb for better brand salience and traction. Ad-spend on mobile space set to grow exponentially “What an idea!”. You might have articulated these words while being tuned to the new Idea commercial launched in a phased manner. The first phase was a 10-second teaser, in which Abhishek Bachchan sat and wondered how he can educate all the children in the country. The commercial ended with him looking up and saying, ‘idea’. The main campaign, a 90-second commercial, launched a few days later opens with a village girl being denied admission in a school, as there are no vacancies. Bachchan, the principal of the school, hits upon the ‘idea’ of starting mobile classrooms in villages. In villages, children gather around a mobile to get their lessons while teachers in the school have mobiles on their desks. The two-way communication enables teachers to teach both sets of students.Advertisers see storytelling in phases an exciting way of generating interest for the product. The creative agency for the Idea campaign is Lowe India. Lowe India chairman and national creative director R Balakrishnan says: “The idea behind the commercial is not just relationship building as people largely interpret. We wanted to break away from the clutter and we did so by having Abhishek Bachchan playing different characters and telling a tale instead of playing himself.” Ogilvy & Mather India chairman & national creative director Piyush Pandey says: “Staging ads in several parts enhance curiosity among audience. Such a technique helps in hooking the audience to the brand for long.” Agrees Mudra Max president Chandradeep Mitra: “Weaving out stories around the product provides image to the brand. Conveying social message through the commercial gives rise to positivism.” A week or two ago, HUL’s Pond’s left TV viewers confused with its latest Pond’s commercial. Anyone can mistake the ad for a Bollywood film trailer—filmmaker Shoojit Sircar’s Kabhi Kabhi Pyar Mein—starring Saif Ali Khan, Priyanka and Neha Dhupia. However, it turned out to be a commercial for Pond’s, with characters and the plot entwined well with the brand proposition. “A breakthrough technology needed a breakthrough communication and hence it was decided to come out with an episodic format of communication. The idea was to convey the proposition of the brand in an interesting manner for the consumer,” says HUL spokesperson. Globally, Coca-Cola has set the best example of bonding with consumers through wonderful stories in its ads. The campaign, Happiness Factory, uses animated characters to tell a modern fairy tale that no way resembles a regular ad. The ad not only won several awards but also became a part of Second Life, the popular virtual world game.
Marketing-Will marketers remain buoyant?
The test is round the corner.Inflation has touched double digits for the first time after over a decade — actually after 1995. It has climbed steeply from under 5 per cent in November 2006, to now over 11 per cent in June this year, and its effects are being seen all around. Rice that cost Rs 20 per kg a year ago is today priced at Rs 27. A weekly vegetable basket that cost Rs 100 last year this time costs Rs 160 today . The government and the RBI are doing their bit to try and combat inflation at the economy level — managing CCR, controlling credit by increasing lending rates, etc. However, the sagacious Indian housewife has her own way of managing the household budget in this age of rising prices. She is unlikely to reduce her savings and indulge in the short term, hoping to make it up later in the long term — despite the general belief that Indians are getting instant-gratification oriented. She will use one of three distinct tactics: 1. Abstinence for products that she can do without for some time 2. Postponing purchase of products that she can do without immediately, waiting for a ‘better' day — like consumer durables and automobiles. The former is already seeing a slow down 3. Trading down in categories that are daily necessities, where she can compromise a bit on quality or imagery for a better price. This could take the form of moving to lower-priced brands in the same category or moving down to unbranded stuff in others, or just reducing the amount consumed. Consumer markets are bound to feel the heat. Life will not be business as usual in the future. How will marketers react in such an environment? An Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) paper released in March this year analysed data across developed markets and established the following: 1. Cutting down on budgets will only help defend profits in the very short term 2. Ultimately the brand will emerge from the downturn weaker and much less profitable 3. It is better to maintain share of voice (SOV) at or above share of market (SOM) during a downturn; the longer-term improvement in profitability is likely to greatly outweigh the short-term reduction 4. If other brands are cutting budgets, the long-term benefits of maintaining SOV at or above SOM will be much greater. In fact, the paper went ahead to say that categories that are more price-driven and where brands carry less importance to consumer choice (motor fuel, mineral water, apparel), are more susceptible than branded categories (luxury cars, financial services and fragrances). Finally, the buzz (and in India, perhaps, retail push) depends on advertising. So depending on buzz as a low-cost method to keep the brand going is not possible. Are these principles applicable to India — a developing market where categories and brands are developing and where the market structure is less homogeneous? That's an interesting question. India's market structure has changed dramatically since the mid-90s, the last time we saw such a high inflation. There are more price segments in each category today and there is a combination of multinational, national and local players in the market, giving consumers a choice to recaliberate the products they buy and bringing a different marketing perspective in to play. The optimism and buoyancy of 2007 continued in the first half of 2008, but this may not be the same as we move forward in the second half and beyond. Today, an optimism remains that a good monsoon will make this rising inflation seem like a passing phase; interestingly it is timed in a generally low ‘marketing activity' period — the monsoons. However multinationals who are historically bottomline-minded will wait and watch to see how the second half pans out. If toplines don't come in, they are likely to reduce spends. Marketers who have a portfolio of offerings are likely to re-jig their spends either at the top end targetted at the upper-income segments that are less likely to be price sensitive or support their lower-end products to make the most of downgradation. The middle market is most likely to see a squeeze. Much as marketers see advertising as a brand building investment, the reality is that investments are made only when immediate returns are looking good — advertising is measured by both short-term and long-term metrics. The joker in the pack is the Indian entrepreneur. Unlike the 1990s, when their presence and hence impact was limited, today the advertising market is driven by many such advertisers whose outlook in spending is different. Indian entrepreneurs have driven the advertising market in many emerging sectors like retail, telecom and real estate. Some are top-line driven and could see this as an opportunity to gain market share by aggressively promoting their products and brands. Some large Indian conglomerates have fairly diversified portfolios that can provide them cushions from divisions that are under direct pressure due to slowing consumer markets. There are others who advertise and brand-build not so much for immediate or long term consumer sales, but for building market-capitalisation value. If these marketers continue to look at the market aggressively, the disturbance could be much less. What challenges do advertising agencies face? Again, since the mid 1990s, there has been a change in agency remuneration structures — moving from commissions to fees, thus insulating themselves from the vagaries posed by depending on client media-spends. Hopefully, it will stand them in good stead, at least in the short run. However, if this situation persists, there will be a need for agencies to focus on more result-oriented communication and more cost-effective media, like digital and retail, that can bring immediate returns. It may be an opportunity for agencies to develop and evaluate mixed targetting at ‘innovators' in the market to drive change — this could be more effective than carpet bombing, the norm in good times. The larger issue of the inflation and economic slowdown is the real test of India's optimism and buoyancy. It is very easy for businesses and marketers to be upbeat when the consumer is gung ho. The real challenge is when the market goes down and the consumer isn't as positive. Will marketers retain that optimism and drive the market or will they ride on consumer sentiment and slow down? Only time will tell. Something worth thinking about.
Business - Sachets paying off
Companies bet big on small packs to beat inflation heat
Small is paying off in a big way for inflation-hit FMCG companies. As consumers’ monthly budgets come under pressure, smaller packs at lower-price points have become critical for consumer product firms since these have begun registering faster offtake than mid-sized packs.Companies are either introducing newer, lower-priced packs at cheaper price points or sharpening focus on the existing smaller packs. The pinch due to inflation is not being felt by the semi-urban and rural households alone. Henkel has just introduced a new 400 gm pack of Henko washing powder at Rs 40 and withdrawn the 500 gm pack that used to sell for Rs 46. It has re-introduced Pril liquid for Rs 50 (425 gm bottle), down from Rs 55 (500 gm). “A family of four requires only 400-425 gm of washing powder in a month. We withdrew the 500 gm packs as as they were making consumers spend more and consume more. In the next two-three months, offtake of products at price points of Re 1, Rs 5, Rs 10 will be higher. We are working at our distribution system so that the smaller packs are easily available,” said Henkel India marketing V-P (laundry and homecare) Ranju Mohan. According to a marketing head of a consumer goods company, unlike the slowdown five years ago when small local players gained in volumes, this time they may not be able to flex their muscles too much, owing to high input costs limiting their presence. Large companies can gain with some planning and good consumer insight. “Households are buying provisions in small packs and when they run out of them by the 21st-22nd of the month, they buy even smaller packs to sustain for the rest of the month. Companies should therefore have products to cater to such needs,” he said. Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation’s Amul introduced 25 gm packs of butter few months back, which is now clocking higher sales than the traditional 100 gm and 500 gm packs. Said GCMMF CGM RS Sodhi: “The same is the case for our milk powder. Earlier, traditional packs of 200 gm, 500 gm and 1 kg used to sell more, with the 500 gm packs selling the most. Now, it’s the 25 gm and 50 gm packs that are selling in higher numbers.” Said FritoLay marketing director Deepika Warrier: “Our smaller packs are moving faster than the bigger ones, but the reasons could be more than just inflation. We have upped penetration and distribution of the smaller SKUs, which could also be the reason why the smaller SKUs are registering higher offtake.” In FritoLay’s case, the Rs 5 pack of 15-20g is selling more than the 30-50g and 80-130g packs. Godrej Consumer Products ED & president Hoshi Press said: “It’s easier to increase prices of premium products but in case of sub-popular products, the choice is between reducing grammage and maintaining the same price points or introducing another price point to suit consumer pockets.”
Small is paying off in a big way for inflation-hit FMCG companies. As consumers’ monthly budgets come under pressure, smaller packs at lower-price points have become critical for consumer product firms since these have begun registering faster offtake than mid-sized packs.Companies are either introducing newer, lower-priced packs at cheaper price points or sharpening focus on the existing smaller packs. The pinch due to inflation is not being felt by the semi-urban and rural households alone. Henkel has just introduced a new 400 gm pack of Henko washing powder at Rs 40 and withdrawn the 500 gm pack that used to sell for Rs 46. It has re-introduced Pril liquid for Rs 50 (425 gm bottle), down from Rs 55 (500 gm). “A family of four requires only 400-425 gm of washing powder in a month. We withdrew the 500 gm packs as as they were making consumers spend more and consume more. In the next two-three months, offtake of products at price points of Re 1, Rs 5, Rs 10 will be higher. We are working at our distribution system so that the smaller packs are easily available,” said Henkel India marketing V-P (laundry and homecare) Ranju Mohan. According to a marketing head of a consumer goods company, unlike the slowdown five years ago when small local players gained in volumes, this time they may not be able to flex their muscles too much, owing to high input costs limiting their presence. Large companies can gain with some planning and good consumer insight. “Households are buying provisions in small packs and when they run out of them by the 21st-22nd of the month, they buy even smaller packs to sustain for the rest of the month. Companies should therefore have products to cater to such needs,” he said. Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation’s Amul introduced 25 gm packs of butter few months back, which is now clocking higher sales than the traditional 100 gm and 500 gm packs. Said GCMMF CGM RS Sodhi: “The same is the case for our milk powder. Earlier, traditional packs of 200 gm, 500 gm and 1 kg used to sell more, with the 500 gm packs selling the most. Now, it’s the 25 gm and 50 gm packs that are selling in higher numbers.” Said FritoLay marketing director Deepika Warrier: “Our smaller packs are moving faster than the bigger ones, but the reasons could be more than just inflation. We have upped penetration and distribution of the smaller SKUs, which could also be the reason why the smaller SKUs are registering higher offtake.” In FritoLay’s case, the Rs 5 pack of 15-20g is selling more than the 30-50g and 80-130g packs. Godrej Consumer Products ED & president Hoshi Press said: “It’s easier to increase prices of premium products but in case of sub-popular products, the choice is between reducing grammage and maintaining the same price points or introducing another price point to suit consumer pockets.”
Business - New Webtool to bring wisdom to grocery shoppers
New web tool brings wisdom of shoppers to the grocery store
Shoppers who dread selecting a salad dressing or anguish over buying the wrong jar of pickles can finally stop tormenting themselves.Zeer.com, a new Cambridge, Massachusetts website, brings the wisdom of the crowd to the grocery store— providing user-generated reviews to spare people the agony of uncertainty in the aisle. The website is part food search engine, part community website. Users can look up food by name or by specifying criteria such as gluten-free or calorie count. They can also read about and review products, create shopping lists, make profiles, and join communities of like-minded eaters. “If you could ask a product a question, what would it be?” said Michael Putnam, president and founder of Zeer. “What do my friends think of you? Are you healthy?” But will it work? Zeer demystifies an arena of life that hardly seems to need such help. It brings social web tools to the kind of store people visit weekly or more frequently, where products have a fairly straightforward function - to be eaten. “Milk is a baseline commodity. People are so familiar with the product and how they use it that unless there’s something dramatically new about it, they don’t need extra help,” said Patti Freeman Evans, a research director at JupiterResearch, who did say the website could be useful to people with special dietary interests. The mobile version of the service allows people to use a cellphone’s browser to access information at m.zeer.com. Shoppers can read reviews by typing in a product’s name or product code into a search field. A user who created a shopping list online can leave the paper list at home and pull up the electronic version. One challenge will be attracting traffic to the website, which plans to make money through advertising. That could be tough for the small start-up, since people seeking product information overwhelmingly use Google or go directly to a retailer’s website, according to Freeman Evans. If Zeer does attract a critical mass of users, the site’s strongest feature could be its social features, which allow users to not only browse and rate products, but connect with others with the same food allergy or low-cholesterol dietary needs. “If it’s a new mother who is trying to figure out what are the best sort of paediatric nutrition supplements, what products work best for colicky babies —that could really help,” Freeman Evans said. Zeer’s social aspect, including recommendations and discussion boards, is what April Lawson of Brookline finds useful. By joining Zeer communities such as Weight Watchers and Snackfood Lovers, she can get recommendations for products she has never heard of and shake up her routine. “It’s an automatic filter and community of people who have the same needs as you - for me, that’s hugely valuable,” Lawson said. “I’m always looking for stuff that fits with my lifestyle, and my healthy eating habits, but that’s new and not boring and I haven’t tried it hundreds of times.” Still, people have long managed to shop for groceries without specialised insight, and are used to looking at shelves instead of a cellphone screen when they choose food. Last week, Putnam demonstrated the mobile version of Zeer while wandering the aisles of the Charles River Plaza Whole Foods Market. He used his phone to pull up a list of kosher, gluten-free foods he created at home using Zeer’s search tool. He looked up information and reviews of two kinds of yogurt by punching their product codes into the search engine. Putnam conceded that many people in the United States still do not use cellphone Web browsers and might be too busy to do extensive in-store research. But that is expected to change, he said. “If I see something in the grocery store that I don’t know anything about, but might be on the more expensive side, I’d rather flip open my mobile phone and take two seconds to type it in than spend the money,” Lawson said.
Shoppers who dread selecting a salad dressing or anguish over buying the wrong jar of pickles can finally stop tormenting themselves.Zeer.com, a new Cambridge, Massachusetts website, brings the wisdom of the crowd to the grocery store— providing user-generated reviews to spare people the agony of uncertainty in the aisle. The website is part food search engine, part community website. Users can look up food by name or by specifying criteria such as gluten-free or calorie count. They can also read about and review products, create shopping lists, make profiles, and join communities of like-minded eaters. “If you could ask a product a question, what would it be?” said Michael Putnam, president and founder of Zeer. “What do my friends think of you? Are you healthy?” But will it work? Zeer demystifies an arena of life that hardly seems to need such help. It brings social web tools to the kind of store people visit weekly or more frequently, where products have a fairly straightforward function - to be eaten. “Milk is a baseline commodity. People are so familiar with the product and how they use it that unless there’s something dramatically new about it, they don’t need extra help,” said Patti Freeman Evans, a research director at JupiterResearch, who did say the website could be useful to people with special dietary interests. The mobile version of the service allows people to use a cellphone’s browser to access information at m.zeer.com. Shoppers can read reviews by typing in a product’s name or product code into a search field. A user who created a shopping list online can leave the paper list at home and pull up the electronic version. One challenge will be attracting traffic to the website, which plans to make money through advertising. That could be tough for the small start-up, since people seeking product information overwhelmingly use Google or go directly to a retailer’s website, according to Freeman Evans. If Zeer does attract a critical mass of users, the site’s strongest feature could be its social features, which allow users to not only browse and rate products, but connect with others with the same food allergy or low-cholesterol dietary needs. “If it’s a new mother who is trying to figure out what are the best sort of paediatric nutrition supplements, what products work best for colicky babies —that could really help,” Freeman Evans said. Zeer’s social aspect, including recommendations and discussion boards, is what April Lawson of Brookline finds useful. By joining Zeer communities such as Weight Watchers and Snackfood Lovers, she can get recommendations for products she has never heard of and shake up her routine. “It’s an automatic filter and community of people who have the same needs as you - for me, that’s hugely valuable,” Lawson said. “I’m always looking for stuff that fits with my lifestyle, and my healthy eating habits, but that’s new and not boring and I haven’t tried it hundreds of times.” Still, people have long managed to shop for groceries without specialised insight, and are used to looking at shelves instead of a cellphone screen when they choose food. Last week, Putnam demonstrated the mobile version of Zeer while wandering the aisles of the Charles River Plaza Whole Foods Market. He used his phone to pull up a list of kosher, gluten-free foods he created at home using Zeer’s search tool. He looked up information and reviews of two kinds of yogurt by punching their product codes into the search engine. Putnam conceded that many people in the United States still do not use cellphone Web browsers and might be too busy to do extensive in-store research. But that is expected to change, he said. “If I see something in the grocery store that I don’t know anything about, but might be on the more expensive side, I’d rather flip open my mobile phone and take two seconds to type it in than spend the money,” Lawson said.
Business - Titan Rebranded
Titan rebranded with new logo and communication
Advertisement24 years of being in the watch business, the Tata Group’s Titan Industries has decided to give a new brand dimension to its flagship watch range, Titan. The only other time such an extensive rebranding exercise was undertaken for Titan was five years ago, when the ‘What’s Your Style?’ and Aamir Khan campaigns were launched. In its new avatar, the brand’s logo colours have been changed to red and white (‘Titan’ inscribed in white on a red background). Titan’s new tagline is: ‘Be More’. This charting of a new course will encompass Brand Titan in its entirety. The reinvention of the brand, in the pipeline for the last eight months, is the result of an extensive study undertaken by Titan in consultation with Future Brands.
The new Titan logo“Titan has always been about the new: new designs, new advertising, new retail experiences and new advertising,” says Harish Bhat, chief operating officer, watches, Titan Industries. “Over the years, our consumer seeks to express himself in varied ways and is multidimensional. He yearns to be much more, in real life, in his dreams and in his imagination. Our take on the category is that a watch allows for these imaginative travels.” (In fact, this is what led to the creation of the Titan Aviator, a spirited range with designs inspired from World War II fighter aircraft). This change in consumers prompted the brand to take a re-look at itself.After research and insight mining by Future Brands (led by Santosh Desai, its managing director and chief executive officer), it was discovered that with an explosion of options in the lives of consumers, they can do much more with their lives. Two key insights were arrived at: ‘My watch is an expression of who all I want to be’ and ‘My watch is a compass of my imagination’.
A frame from the new Titan TVCTitan offers four ranges: Titan Aviator (for those who love flying), Titan Octane (for those who are fascinated by car racing), Titan Raga (the sensual luxury range for women) and Titan Heritage (inspired by cultural/ heritage monuments). “We want our consumers to say they feel like an aviator, or a princess, or anything they want to be, when they wear a Titan on their wrist,” says Bhat. “Hence the tagline, ‘Be More’.” Santosh Desai says that the new communication goes beyond the prettiness/ stylishness/ adornment factor of a watch. “This is a re-look at the category and the brand,” he emphasises. Dipping into Titan’s history, he says, “Many years ago, a watch was almost like a functional object that fixed you in your place in life. Titan opened up our options in a graceful way, liberating consumers to express themselves through the kind of watches they wore.” Ogilvy & Mather Bangalore has conceptualised the new campaign for Titan’s brand personality change, which shows brand ambassador Aamir Khan encouraging people to be ‘born’ every day. According to Piyush Pandey, chairman, Ogilvy India, and national creative director and vice-chairman, Ogilvy Asia Pacific, “Two decades ago, I had the privilege of viewing the first Titan ad at Ogilvy, when I was a junior employee and could only see it from afar! Since then, I have worked on it personally and I have realised that it’s a very restless brand.” Pandey says Titan comes up constantly with new designs, packaging and communication, even before one has had one’s fill of the earlier ones. “In Aamir, we found a perfect brand fit five years ago, as this is one man who is also very restless and constantly reinvents himself, leaving his fans craving for more,” he says. The new communication is aimed at reinforcing that Titan is not just a watch, it’s a state of mind – this is an extension of Titan’s recent campaigns, which talked of different watches for different moods. Titan plans on spending Rs 15 crore over the next two years to advertise on the ‘Be More’ thought. This includes mass media, below-the-line and other media such as online and retail marketing. For now, ‘Be More’ is an expression only for the mother brand Titan; whether or not it will filter down to other Titan watch brands such as FasTrack is not known. For the record, the watch market in India (both organised and unorganised) comprises 40 million watches (Rs 3,000 crore in terms of market size) out of which 15 million watches belong to the organised segment. Titan claims to have a majority market share (65 per cent) of this organised segment. Over the next 12 months, Titan plans to launch 10 new collections with 25-30 watches in each collection. Further, each retail touch point will contain a ‘Be More’ story about the collection on display.
Advertisement24 years of being in the watch business, the Tata Group’s Titan Industries has decided to give a new brand dimension to its flagship watch range, Titan. The only other time such an extensive rebranding exercise was undertaken for Titan was five years ago, when the ‘What’s Your Style?’ and Aamir Khan campaigns were launched. In its new avatar, the brand’s logo colours have been changed to red and white (‘Titan’ inscribed in white on a red background). Titan’s new tagline is: ‘Be More’. This charting of a new course will encompass Brand Titan in its entirety. The reinvention of the brand, in the pipeline for the last eight months, is the result of an extensive study undertaken by Titan in consultation with Future Brands.
The new Titan logo“Titan has always been about the new: new designs, new advertising, new retail experiences and new advertising,” says Harish Bhat, chief operating officer, watches, Titan Industries. “Over the years, our consumer seeks to express himself in varied ways and is multidimensional. He yearns to be much more, in real life, in his dreams and in his imagination. Our take on the category is that a watch allows for these imaginative travels.” (In fact, this is what led to the creation of the Titan Aviator, a spirited range with designs inspired from World War II fighter aircraft). This change in consumers prompted the brand to take a re-look at itself.After research and insight mining by Future Brands (led by Santosh Desai, its managing director and chief executive officer), it was discovered that with an explosion of options in the lives of consumers, they can do much more with their lives. Two key insights were arrived at: ‘My watch is an expression of who all I want to be’ and ‘My watch is a compass of my imagination’.
A frame from the new Titan TVCTitan offers four ranges: Titan Aviator (for those who love flying), Titan Octane (for those who are fascinated by car racing), Titan Raga (the sensual luxury range for women) and Titan Heritage (inspired by cultural/ heritage monuments). “We want our consumers to say they feel like an aviator, or a princess, or anything they want to be, when they wear a Titan on their wrist,” says Bhat. “Hence the tagline, ‘Be More’.” Santosh Desai says that the new communication goes beyond the prettiness/ stylishness/ adornment factor of a watch. “This is a re-look at the category and the brand,” he emphasises. Dipping into Titan’s history, he says, “Many years ago, a watch was almost like a functional object that fixed you in your place in life. Titan opened up our options in a graceful way, liberating consumers to express themselves through the kind of watches they wore.” Ogilvy & Mather Bangalore has conceptualised the new campaign for Titan’s brand personality change, which shows brand ambassador Aamir Khan encouraging people to be ‘born’ every day. According to Piyush Pandey, chairman, Ogilvy India, and national creative director and vice-chairman, Ogilvy Asia Pacific, “Two decades ago, I had the privilege of viewing the first Titan ad at Ogilvy, when I was a junior employee and could only see it from afar! Since then, I have worked on it personally and I have realised that it’s a very restless brand.” Pandey says Titan comes up constantly with new designs, packaging and communication, even before one has had one’s fill of the earlier ones. “In Aamir, we found a perfect brand fit five years ago, as this is one man who is also very restless and constantly reinvents himself, leaving his fans craving for more,” he says. The new communication is aimed at reinforcing that Titan is not just a watch, it’s a state of mind – this is an extension of Titan’s recent campaigns, which talked of different watches for different moods. Titan plans on spending Rs 15 crore over the next two years to advertise on the ‘Be More’ thought. This includes mass media, below-the-line and other media such as online and retail marketing. For now, ‘Be More’ is an expression only for the mother brand Titan; whether or not it will filter down to other Titan watch brands such as FasTrack is not known. For the record, the watch market in India (both organised and unorganised) comprises 40 million watches (Rs 3,000 crore in terms of market size) out of which 15 million watches belong to the organised segment. Titan claims to have a majority market share (65 per cent) of this organised segment. Over the next 12 months, Titan plans to launch 10 new collections with 25-30 watches in each collection. Further, each retail touch point will contain a ‘Be More’ story about the collection on display.
Entertainment - NDTV taps unusual news segment
NDTV Convergence taps unusual news segment with NoGyan.com
Kapil Ohri afaqs! New Delhi, July 04, 2008 NDTV
Convergence, the digital media arm of the NDTV Group, is trying to move beyond hardcore news. It recently launched a site, NoGyan.com, to capture and offer news, views and analysis of unusual happenings in areas such as glamour, celebrities, sports, technology, spirituality, health and automobiles. “The site is targeted at the youth and NDTV Convergence has intentionally not branded it as an NDTV product because it does not want to attach the brand value of NDTV to NoGyan.com,” says Sanjay Trehan, chief executive officer, NDTV Convergence. Trehan adds, “NoGyan does not have a synergy with the other NDTV Convergence sites. It’s a separate or standalone product as compared to our other sites, which have a synergy with the NDTV Group channels. We want to reach out to a new audience through NoGyan. We might face competition from entertainment and lifestyle sites.”
NoGyan will be opened to users in the next two months. It will include a user generated content section, My NoGyan, allowing users to upload videos, create blogs and contribute to its fora. NDTV Convergence has set up an internal team to source and cover news for NoGyan. It is also sourcing content from various news agencies such as Indo Asian News Service, Associated Press and Agence France-Presse. Since NoGyan is positioned as a different entity in its portfolio, NDTV Convergence will not employ the usual online advertising techniques like display advertising to promote the site. Trehan says, “We will use social media marketing to promote NoGyan. We will be creating a community on Orkut, a group on Yahoo Groups, and will develop a NoGyan widget for Facebook. We will also create NoGyan ringtones and screensavers.”The site will earn its revenue mainly through banner and video ads and through sponsors for its various sections in the next three months.“NDTV Convergence earns 80 per cent of its revenue from online properties and 20 per cent from its mobile site, NDTVActive.com. Some 75 per cent of its online revenue comes from NDTV.com, while other sites such as NDTVKhabar.com, NDTVProfit.com, NDTVImagine.com and NDTVArabia.tv contribute 25 per cent of the online revenue. We expect that 20-25 per cent of the online revenue will be generated through NoGyan.com in the next three years,” says Trehan. NDTV Convergence also launched a travel portal called NDTVTravels.com in June 2008.
Kapil Ohri afaqs! New Delhi, July 04, 2008 NDTV
Convergence, the digital media arm of the NDTV Group, is trying to move beyond hardcore news. It recently launched a site, NoGyan.com, to capture and offer news, views and analysis of unusual happenings in areas such as glamour, celebrities, sports, technology, spirituality, health and automobiles. “The site is targeted at the youth and NDTV Convergence has intentionally not branded it as an NDTV product because it does not want to attach the brand value of NDTV to NoGyan.com,” says Sanjay Trehan, chief executive officer, NDTV Convergence. Trehan adds, “NoGyan does not have a synergy with the other NDTV Convergence sites. It’s a separate or standalone product as compared to our other sites, which have a synergy with the NDTV Group channels. We want to reach out to a new audience through NoGyan. We might face competition from entertainment and lifestyle sites.”
NoGyan will be opened to users in the next two months. It will include a user generated content section, My NoGyan, allowing users to upload videos, create blogs and contribute to its fora. NDTV Convergence has set up an internal team to source and cover news for NoGyan. It is also sourcing content from various news agencies such as Indo Asian News Service, Associated Press and Agence France-Presse. Since NoGyan is positioned as a different entity in its portfolio, NDTV Convergence will not employ the usual online advertising techniques like display advertising to promote the site. Trehan says, “We will use social media marketing to promote NoGyan. We will be creating a community on Orkut, a group on Yahoo Groups, and will develop a NoGyan widget for Facebook. We will also create NoGyan ringtones and screensavers.”The site will earn its revenue mainly through banner and video ads and through sponsors for its various sections in the next three months.“NDTV Convergence earns 80 per cent of its revenue from online properties and 20 per cent from its mobile site, NDTVActive.com. Some 75 per cent of its online revenue comes from NDTV.com, while other sites such as NDTVKhabar.com, NDTVProfit.com, NDTVImagine.com and NDTVArabia.tv contribute 25 per cent of the online revenue. We expect that 20-25 per cent of the online revenue will be generated through NoGyan.com in the next three years,” says Trehan. NDTV Convergence also launched a travel portal called NDTVTravels.com in June 2008.
Business - Don't say goodbye to Microhoo just yet
You didn’t think it was over, did you? As Yahoo's stock has fallen dangerously low -- almost to sub-$20 levels that preceded Microsoft's takeover bid back in February -- Microsoft is looking for partners to help it break up Yahoo so that it can nab its search business, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. The story cites AOL and News Corp., two businesses floated as potential Yahoo bidders back in the spring.
The story, which chronicles many of the details of the five-month-long saga, is heavily couched and says that "some of the people familiar with these talks say they are preliminary and unlikely to result in a deal with Yahoo". And it reports that a meeting between Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock was canceled, which could mean no partners had been found.
In a demonstration of how desperate Yahoo investors are for good news, the company's beleaguered stock jumped about 8 per cent to almost $22 after the story broke.
Search-focused all along?
In recent weeks Yahoo has raised doubts that Microsoft ever wanted to buy it in its entirety, suggesting that all Microsoft was interested in was Yahoo's search business, which is the only way Microsoft would be able to challenge the scale of rival Google in that space -- although Microhoo would still only equal half of Google's search share.
For buyers, combining Microsoft's and Yahoo's search businesses would be a more welcome scenario than the current ties between Google and Yahoo. How would a Microhoo work, given Yahoo's recent pact to let Google sell some search advertising on queries generated on Yahoo and by Yahoo partners? Well, that deal has several outs, including one relating to change of ownership by Yahoo. While there would be a $250 million charge paid to Google, that's chump change for Microsoft if it can finally get what it wants out of the deal.
It's true Microsoft, which has a healthy display ad business and ad-serving and ad-management technologies, doesn't need the half of Yahoo that isn't search, and buying the whole thing would make integration much more challenging. If Microsoft can find other interested parties to unload Yahoo's display-ad business, it would come out of what has been a disastrous quest to goose its online business looking like the winner.
The story, which chronicles many of the details of the five-month-long saga, is heavily couched and says that "some of the people familiar with these talks say they are preliminary and unlikely to result in a deal with Yahoo". And it reports that a meeting between Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock was canceled, which could mean no partners had been found.
In a demonstration of how desperate Yahoo investors are for good news, the company's beleaguered stock jumped about 8 per cent to almost $22 after the story broke.
Search-focused all along?
In recent weeks Yahoo has raised doubts that Microsoft ever wanted to buy it in its entirety, suggesting that all Microsoft was interested in was Yahoo's search business, which is the only way Microsoft would be able to challenge the scale of rival Google in that space -- although Microhoo would still only equal half of Google's search share.
For buyers, combining Microsoft's and Yahoo's search businesses would be a more welcome scenario than the current ties between Google and Yahoo. How would a Microhoo work, given Yahoo's recent pact to let Google sell some search advertising on queries generated on Yahoo and by Yahoo partners? Well, that deal has several outs, including one relating to change of ownership by Yahoo. While there would be a $250 million charge paid to Google, that's chump change for Microsoft if it can finally get what it wants out of the deal.
It's true Microsoft, which has a healthy display ad business and ad-serving and ad-management technologies, doesn't need the half of Yahoo that isn't search, and buying the whole thing would make integration much more challenging. If Microsoft can find other interested parties to unload Yahoo's display-ad business, it would come out of what has been a disastrous quest to goose its online business looking like the winner.
India - Strong message to the intolerant
The Supreme Court’s quashing of the summons issued by a Gujarat court to political scientist Ashis Nandy should send a strong message not just to harassers of free speech, including intolerant state governments, and religious and chauvinistic groups, but to the lower judiciary as well. The summons were issued on a first information report (FIR) registered by the Gujarat police on the basis of a complaint filed by a non-government organisation that his analysis of the 2007 Gujarat elections published in The Times of India in January tended to promote enmity among different groups and was derogatory to the state as a whole. The Supreme Court bench found that Dr. Nandy’s academic analysis was hardly the incendiary material it was alleged to be and the attempt to prosecute him was only a demonstration of intolerance. This is the latest in a series of court orders that have sought to protect writers, artists, film makers, entertainers, and public personalities from harassment through frivolous cases filed by intolerant religious or regional forces, self-proclaimed enforcers of morality, and governments. In May, the Delhi High Court quashed proceedings in three cases in which the renowned painter M.F. Husain was charged with painting Hindu gods and goddesses in an objectionable manner. The Supreme Court itself had earlier come to the rescue of Richard Gere, who was sought to be arrested and prosecuted for his demonstrative gesture of kissing Shilpa Shetty.
That the Supreme Court and the high courts should step in to prevent the harassment of writers and creative artistes through the abuse of the legal process is not a surprise. What is disquieting is that despite repeated judicial pronouncements, there seems to be no let-up in the attempts to silence free speech and expression that some group or the other finds objectionable. In part, that is due to the overly broad interpretation by the lower judiciary of what constitutes an offence under Section 153-A of the Indian Penal Code, which deals with writings and creative activities that promote “disharmony or feelings of enmity, hatred or ill will between different religious, racial, language or regional groups, or castes or communities.” Often enough, magistrates are persuaded by vocal and powerful religious or chauvinistic groups playing upon local sentiments to take up cases and issue summons on the most frivolous grounds. They would do well to heed the caution urged by the Delhi High Court while quashing the cases against Mr. Husain that they should strictly scrutinise frivolous and vexatious complaints that impinge on the basic freedom of an individual. The intolerant need to be told clearly and firmly of the level of tolerance called for in a democratic society. While court orders in specific cases illustrate what cannot be considered objectionable, the Supreme Court in the case relating to the film Ore Oru Gramathile had adopted a broad standard that “the effect of the words must be judged from the standards of reasonable, strong-minded, firm and courageous men, and not those of weak and vacillating minds, nor of those who scent danger in every hostile point of view.” The permissive legal culture that provides any bigot a forum to turn perfectly acceptable speech or expression into a crime and harass writers and creative artistes is clearly in need of an attitudinal, if not structural, overhaul.
World - Living longer but as second class citizens
Hasan Suroor
The British government has announced plans for tougher measures to check ageism after pressure groups warned of a “class war” if the old continued to be treated as though they were less than full citizens.
The title of the Oscar-winning Hollywood blockbuster, No country for Old Men — the film is not exactly about old age — could well apply to Britain where old people say they feel like “second class citizens” because of widespread prejudice against them despite stringent anti-age discrimination laws. The government has been forced to announce plans for tougher measures to check “ageism” after pressure groups warned of a “class war” if the old continued to be treated as though they were less than full citizens.
A new legislation, introduced in the Commons last week, will extend the existing ban on age-related discrimination to provision of goods and services. This follows research showing that a majority of old Britons believe that the country is “rampantly ageist” with those over 50 facing discrimination not only at work but also in other areas of life.
In a more youthful country, this may not have mattered so much. But Britain is an ageing nation and according to the government’s own data there has been a significant increase in the population of old people as Britons are living longer as a result of improved sanitation, medicine, food and living standards. Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) point to a further rise in their population. It is estimated that the number of people over 100 alone is expected to be in the region of 40,000 by mid-2031.
Yet social attitudes have not kept pace with the growth of the “grey” population and, critics say, there is hardly any sphere of life where old people, especially the 60-plus, are not regarded as a “risk” or liability. Employers are reluctant to hire them; doctors don’t see them as a priority; financial institutions tend to look the other way when old people come asking for loans/mortgages; and insurance agents run a mile at their sight.
There have been cases of old people being refused credit cards, mortgages, travel insurance (one woman reported that her insurance company cancelled her travel insurance when she turned 70) and denied even proper medical treatment because of their age. Last year, a study by Quality and Safety in Health Care, a sister publication of the British Medical Journal, revealed that doctors routinely discriminated against older patients by denying them the tests and treatments they offered to younger people.
It said, for example, that those over 65 were less likely to be referred to a cardiologist and given heart treatments than younger patients. A pressure on resources was cited as a factor. “Resources are limited and doctors have to make difficult decisions. Maybe they have run out of options and are using age as an excuse. When we spoke to the doctors they were quite ready to justify their reasons. They may see older people as less deserving,” Professor Ann Bowling of the department of psychology at the University College London, who led the study, said in a newspaper interview.
More recently, The Observer reported the case of an elderly woman with back pain who was told by her doctor that it was because of old age, but later it turned out that she had had cancer of the spine. “In another case, a 76-year-old heart patient was told that she had had a ‘long life’ and asked if she really wanted to stay on the waiting list for a bypass,” it said.
According to campaign groups such as the Help Aged and the Age Concern, a person’s age should never be used as a factor in determining treatment. The British Medical Association is reported to be conducting its own study to gauge doctors’ attitude towards older patients. The view in medical circles is that the problem is exaggerated. It is claimed that more often than not, there are sound medical reasons for not subjecting elderly and fragile patients to stressful tests but this is misunderstood as discrimination. It is acknowledged, though, that there is need for doctors to handle such situations with greater sensitivity.
Ageism is reported to be most common at workplace with employers openly flouting Employment Equality (Age) Regulations which came into force in 2006 following an European Union directive. The law bans age-based discrimination in recruitment, wages, training, promotion, redundancy, retirement and pension provision.
A review on the first anniversary of the law revealed that ageism was still “endemic” with 55-64-year-olds being the worst-affected. A separate poll found that 16 million people experienced “ageist practices.” This despite the fact that more than 80 per cent of the employers said they were aware it was illegal to discriminate on grounds of age.
The Employment Tribunal Service, which adjudicates cases of alleged discrimination, has been inundated with complaints since the anti-age discrimination law came into force. According to a report of the Employers Forum on Age (EFA), a charity which campaigns against ageism, more than 2,000 claims for compensation were received by the Tribunal in the first year of the new law.
Campaigners claim that this is only the proverbial tip of the iceberg as many cases go unreported. But, thanks to the 2006 law, the victims of ageism are at least able to seek redress and the issue is now “on the radar,” as an EFA official put it. Employers have been warned of a backlash if workers continue to be discriminated against because of their age.
Even in liberal institutions such as theatre, media and universities, covert ageism is reported to be rife. Actors, writers and technicians on the wrong side of 60 complain that they don’t get work in theatre. Last year, a group of like-minded theatre professionals — all in their 60s — got together to launch a company, Prime Theatre, with the aim of providing work for older actors, technicians, etc. The company, funded by the Arts Council England and the Lottery Fund, will also produce plays that appeal to older audiences and, indeed, its maiden play, Aleksei Arbuzov’s Old World, was about ageism.
Prime Theatre’s patron Edward Woodward, who has been a successful film and TV actor, said he felt marginalised as he grew older as did other members of the group. Its founder and artistic director Ros Liddiard was reported in the Stage News, the newspaper of the performing arts industry, as saying that one reason for older artistes not getting work was that fewer parts are written for them.
“It’s perceived older actors feel a little bit marginalised, not because they aren’t usable, but there does tend to be a lack of older parts. We also talked to a lot of older people who said they’re not getting the sort of theatre they want to see,” she said.Charge against BBC
The BBC is routinely accused of ageism, especially in relation to women, prompting charges of both “ageism and sexism.” Several high-profile women have left the BBC in recent years complaining that it is not a place for old women. Last year, there was an uproar when 55-year-old Moira Stuart, BBC’s first black news presenter, was dropped from news and current affairs allegedly to make room for younger presenters. A few months later, she resigned saying she felt frustrated by alleged prejudice against older women.
Before that, 62-year-old Anna Ford, one of the BBC’s most seasoned news presenters, quit saying she feared she would be “sidelined” and “shovelled off … to a graveyard shift” because of her age.
“I think when you reflect on the people who they’re bringing in and they’re all much younger. I think they are being brought in because they are younger. I think that’s specifically one of the reasons why they’re being employed … I might have been shovelled off into News 24 … to the sort of graveyard shift, and I wouldn’t have wanted to do that because it wouldn’t have interested me,” she said sparking front-page headlines about a growing “culture of ageism” at the BBC.
Then there was Nick Ross, a leading male presenter, who resigned saying he had seen the “writing on the wall” and preferred to leave on his own before shove came to push. Mr. Ross who had presented the BBC’s popular prime-time programme Crimewatch since it was launched in the 1980s, criticised the corporation for ignoring older people as it sought out younger audiences.
The BBC, of course, denies this as do other organisations. There may be some truth in claims that often there is too much generalisation with isolated or individual cases blown out of proportion by pro-active campaigners and a hyper media. But it is also true that there is no smoke without fire and, in this case, the smoke is thick enough to warrant action
The British government has announced plans for tougher measures to check ageism after pressure groups warned of a “class war” if the old continued to be treated as though they were less than full citizens.
The title of the Oscar-winning Hollywood blockbuster, No country for Old Men — the film is not exactly about old age — could well apply to Britain where old people say they feel like “second class citizens” because of widespread prejudice against them despite stringent anti-age discrimination laws. The government has been forced to announce plans for tougher measures to check “ageism” after pressure groups warned of a “class war” if the old continued to be treated as though they were less than full citizens.
A new legislation, introduced in the Commons last week, will extend the existing ban on age-related discrimination to provision of goods and services. This follows research showing that a majority of old Britons believe that the country is “rampantly ageist” with those over 50 facing discrimination not only at work but also in other areas of life.
In a more youthful country, this may not have mattered so much. But Britain is an ageing nation and according to the government’s own data there has been a significant increase in the population of old people as Britons are living longer as a result of improved sanitation, medicine, food and living standards. Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) point to a further rise in their population. It is estimated that the number of people over 100 alone is expected to be in the region of 40,000 by mid-2031.
Yet social attitudes have not kept pace with the growth of the “grey” population and, critics say, there is hardly any sphere of life where old people, especially the 60-plus, are not regarded as a “risk” or liability. Employers are reluctant to hire them; doctors don’t see them as a priority; financial institutions tend to look the other way when old people come asking for loans/mortgages; and insurance agents run a mile at their sight.
There have been cases of old people being refused credit cards, mortgages, travel insurance (one woman reported that her insurance company cancelled her travel insurance when she turned 70) and denied even proper medical treatment because of their age. Last year, a study by Quality and Safety in Health Care, a sister publication of the British Medical Journal, revealed that doctors routinely discriminated against older patients by denying them the tests and treatments they offered to younger people.
It said, for example, that those over 65 were less likely to be referred to a cardiologist and given heart treatments than younger patients. A pressure on resources was cited as a factor. “Resources are limited and doctors have to make difficult decisions. Maybe they have run out of options and are using age as an excuse. When we spoke to the doctors they were quite ready to justify their reasons. They may see older people as less deserving,” Professor Ann Bowling of the department of psychology at the University College London, who led the study, said in a newspaper interview.
More recently, The Observer reported the case of an elderly woman with back pain who was told by her doctor that it was because of old age, but later it turned out that she had had cancer of the spine. “In another case, a 76-year-old heart patient was told that she had had a ‘long life’ and asked if she really wanted to stay on the waiting list for a bypass,” it said.
According to campaign groups such as the Help Aged and the Age Concern, a person’s age should never be used as a factor in determining treatment. The British Medical Association is reported to be conducting its own study to gauge doctors’ attitude towards older patients. The view in medical circles is that the problem is exaggerated. It is claimed that more often than not, there are sound medical reasons for not subjecting elderly and fragile patients to stressful tests but this is misunderstood as discrimination. It is acknowledged, though, that there is need for doctors to handle such situations with greater sensitivity.
Ageism is reported to be most common at workplace with employers openly flouting Employment Equality (Age) Regulations which came into force in 2006 following an European Union directive. The law bans age-based discrimination in recruitment, wages, training, promotion, redundancy, retirement and pension provision.
A review on the first anniversary of the law revealed that ageism was still “endemic” with 55-64-year-olds being the worst-affected. A separate poll found that 16 million people experienced “ageist practices.” This despite the fact that more than 80 per cent of the employers said they were aware it was illegal to discriminate on grounds of age.
The Employment Tribunal Service, which adjudicates cases of alleged discrimination, has been inundated with complaints since the anti-age discrimination law came into force. According to a report of the Employers Forum on Age (EFA), a charity which campaigns against ageism, more than 2,000 claims for compensation were received by the Tribunal in the first year of the new law.
Campaigners claim that this is only the proverbial tip of the iceberg as many cases go unreported. But, thanks to the 2006 law, the victims of ageism are at least able to seek redress and the issue is now “on the radar,” as an EFA official put it. Employers have been warned of a backlash if workers continue to be discriminated against because of their age.
Even in liberal institutions such as theatre, media and universities, covert ageism is reported to be rife. Actors, writers and technicians on the wrong side of 60 complain that they don’t get work in theatre. Last year, a group of like-minded theatre professionals — all in their 60s — got together to launch a company, Prime Theatre, with the aim of providing work for older actors, technicians, etc. The company, funded by the Arts Council England and the Lottery Fund, will also produce plays that appeal to older audiences and, indeed, its maiden play, Aleksei Arbuzov’s Old World, was about ageism.
Prime Theatre’s patron Edward Woodward, who has been a successful film and TV actor, said he felt marginalised as he grew older as did other members of the group. Its founder and artistic director Ros Liddiard was reported in the Stage News, the newspaper of the performing arts industry, as saying that one reason for older artistes not getting work was that fewer parts are written for them.
“It’s perceived older actors feel a little bit marginalised, not because they aren’t usable, but there does tend to be a lack of older parts. We also talked to a lot of older people who said they’re not getting the sort of theatre they want to see,” she said.Charge against BBC
The BBC is routinely accused of ageism, especially in relation to women, prompting charges of both “ageism and sexism.” Several high-profile women have left the BBC in recent years complaining that it is not a place for old women. Last year, there was an uproar when 55-year-old Moira Stuart, BBC’s first black news presenter, was dropped from news and current affairs allegedly to make room for younger presenters. A few months later, she resigned saying she felt frustrated by alleged prejudice against older women.
Before that, 62-year-old Anna Ford, one of the BBC’s most seasoned news presenters, quit saying she feared she would be “sidelined” and “shovelled off … to a graveyard shift” because of her age.
“I think when you reflect on the people who they’re bringing in and they’re all much younger. I think they are being brought in because they are younger. I think that’s specifically one of the reasons why they’re being employed … I might have been shovelled off into News 24 … to the sort of graveyard shift, and I wouldn’t have wanted to do that because it wouldn’t have interested me,” she said sparking front-page headlines about a growing “culture of ageism” at the BBC.
Then there was Nick Ross, a leading male presenter, who resigned saying he had seen the “writing on the wall” and preferred to leave on his own before shove came to push. Mr. Ross who had presented the BBC’s popular prime-time programme Crimewatch since it was launched in the 1980s, criticised the corporation for ignoring older people as it sought out younger audiences.
The BBC, of course, denies this as do other organisations. There may be some truth in claims that often there is too much generalisation with isolated or individual cases blown out of proportion by pro-active campaigners and a hyper media. But it is also true that there is no smoke without fire and, in this case, the smoke is thick enough to warrant action
India - A monument to hate in Chhatterhame
Praveen Swami
Inflamed by the Shrine Board issue, people of a village in central Kashmir build a shrine for Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists.
Bright pink plastic flowers and lurid crepe-paper wreaths adorn Jammu and Kashmir’s first shrine to the Lashkar-e-Taiba. Last month, two Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists from Pakistan were shot dead in the forests next to the village of Chhatterhama, 30 kilometres from the central Kashmir town of Ganderbal. Mired in the communally-charged, region-wide agitation against land-use rights granted to the Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board, the local community saw the terrorists as s oldiers who had died for their cause.
“Here was India conspiring to seize our land and hand it over to infidels,” says local businessman Zahoor Ahmad, “and here were these two foreigners who had given their lives to save Islam in Kashmir. One of them was just 14 or 15, no older than my brother. And so, we gathered Rs.11,000 to give these martyrs the kind of burial they deserved.”
“May god’s mercy and the blessings of Mohammad always be with you; I shall always pray for you to be blessed by the eternal rest of paradise,” reads the poetic Urdu-language inscription on the gravestones, which identify the two terrorists by their code-names Abu Hurrera and Abu Saria. Both were buried at the highest point of the village graveyard, in an especially fenced-off section.
Ethnic-Kashmiri jihadists killed in Jammu and Kashmir have often been buried after elaborate funeral processions in special “martyrs’ graveyards.” However, no shrines or special memorials have ever been built to mark the death of Pakistani jihadists operating in Jammu and Kashmir. In some cases, rural communities have even refused to take responsibility for their burial.
Chhatterhama isn’t a likely location for a shrine celebrating the Lashkar’s Islamist cause. Not a single Chhatterhama resident joined the jihadist movement in Jammu and Kashmir. Its residents — most of them Shawl Bafs, or artisans who hand-embroider shawls — were supporters of the National Conference. Few would offer even ethnic-Kashmiri jihadist groups like the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen shelter or support. As a result, Chhatterhama never once saw an exchange of fire between jihadists and the police or the army.
But when the Shrine Board agitation began, the village embraced a cause it had long resisted. Local authorities and political parties had done nothing to challenge rumours spread by Islamist groups that a large-scale plot was under way to give away land to outsiders — to outsiders, moreover, hostile to Islam. As a result, the jihad in Jammu and Kashmir acquired a new legitimacy.
On June 23, one day after the terrorists’ killing, Chhatterhama villagers marched to the main crossroads at Batpora to express their outrage on the Shrine Board issue. Work on the Lashkar shrine began the same afternoon. And the following Friday, Chhatterhama observed the two terrorists’ Rasm-e-Chaharrum death-rites alongside another protest march against the Shrine Board.
Why was Chhatterhama so quick to join the Islamist cause? One reason might be the growth of neo-conservative religious groups in the area, which until recently had almost no rural reach. “Most people here used to worship at shrines,” says local Jamaat-e-Islami activist Bashir Ahmad Bhat, “and followed practices that were Hindu in origin. But my generation has learned to read, and thus discovered the true Islam.”
It is also likely that the new chauvinism has been propelled by the stresses of economic change. Shawl-Bafs have been hit hard by competition from cheap machine-embroidered shawls, often made in Ludhiana and Jalandhar. Embroidering shawls, moreover, is killing work: wages run as low as Rs. 80 a day for work which leaves many Shawl Bafs half-blind and arthritic before they turn 40.
But few young people in Chhattarhama, despite the spread of school and college education, have the kind of specialist skills needed to get new-economy jobs in the service or information-technology sectors. Even fewer have the kind of capital needed to set up independent businesses — or pay the bribes often needed to get a government job. All of these frustrations seem to have fed the anti-Shrine Board protest in Chhatterhama. Local clerics from the Jamaat Ahl-e-Hadis, Jamaat-e-Islami activists and National Conference workers all saw reason to fuel the chauvinist fears which underpinned the protests, seeing in them a possibility to expand their constituency. All of them seem to have won.Ironic twist
Have jihadists like the Lashkar also gained? The shrine in Chhatterhama would seem to suggest so — but the evidence is more ambiguous than the memorial suggests.
Notably, Lashkar ideologues most likely won’t approve of the Chhatterhama shrine. Jamaat Ahl-e-Hadis’ theological tradition — from which the Lashkar draws its legitimacy — disapproves of the veneration of shrines and relics, seeing them as heretical borrowings from Hinduism. In general, Lashkar jihadists’ graves consist of nothing more elaborate than a un-inscribed stone marker.
Indeed, Salafists — of whom the Ahl-e-Hadis are a subset — have often carried their hatred of shrine worship to great lengths. When the followers of the ultra-right Saudi Arabian cleric, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, captured the cities of Mecca and Medina in 1803-1804, they destroyed several shrines including one built over the tomb of the Prophet Mohammad’s daughter, Fatima Zehra.
“In Kashmir, everything eventually turns into a shrine,” says Mr. Ahmed, a wry smile on his face. “Come back here in a few years’ time, and you might just see people telling you that they have come here to pray for sons at the grave of a famous Pir [godman]”.
Inflamed by the Shrine Board issue, people of a village in central Kashmir build a shrine for Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists.
Bright pink plastic flowers and lurid crepe-paper wreaths adorn Jammu and Kashmir’s first shrine to the Lashkar-e-Taiba. Last month, two Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists from Pakistan were shot dead in the forests next to the village of Chhatterhama, 30 kilometres from the central Kashmir town of Ganderbal. Mired in the communally-charged, region-wide agitation against land-use rights granted to the Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board, the local community saw the terrorists as s oldiers who had died for their cause.
“Here was India conspiring to seize our land and hand it over to infidels,” says local businessman Zahoor Ahmad, “and here were these two foreigners who had given their lives to save Islam in Kashmir. One of them was just 14 or 15, no older than my brother. And so, we gathered Rs.11,000 to give these martyrs the kind of burial they deserved.”
“May god’s mercy and the blessings of Mohammad always be with you; I shall always pray for you to be blessed by the eternal rest of paradise,” reads the poetic Urdu-language inscription on the gravestones, which identify the two terrorists by their code-names Abu Hurrera and Abu Saria. Both were buried at the highest point of the village graveyard, in an especially fenced-off section.
Ethnic-Kashmiri jihadists killed in Jammu and Kashmir have often been buried after elaborate funeral processions in special “martyrs’ graveyards.” However, no shrines or special memorials have ever been built to mark the death of Pakistani jihadists operating in Jammu and Kashmir. In some cases, rural communities have even refused to take responsibility for their burial.
Chhatterhama isn’t a likely location for a shrine celebrating the Lashkar’s Islamist cause. Not a single Chhatterhama resident joined the jihadist movement in Jammu and Kashmir. Its residents — most of them Shawl Bafs, or artisans who hand-embroider shawls — were supporters of the National Conference. Few would offer even ethnic-Kashmiri jihadist groups like the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen shelter or support. As a result, Chhatterhama never once saw an exchange of fire between jihadists and the police or the army.
But when the Shrine Board agitation began, the village embraced a cause it had long resisted. Local authorities and political parties had done nothing to challenge rumours spread by Islamist groups that a large-scale plot was under way to give away land to outsiders — to outsiders, moreover, hostile to Islam. As a result, the jihad in Jammu and Kashmir acquired a new legitimacy.
On June 23, one day after the terrorists’ killing, Chhatterhama villagers marched to the main crossroads at Batpora to express their outrage on the Shrine Board issue. Work on the Lashkar shrine began the same afternoon. And the following Friday, Chhatterhama observed the two terrorists’ Rasm-e-Chaharrum death-rites alongside another protest march against the Shrine Board.
Why was Chhatterhama so quick to join the Islamist cause? One reason might be the growth of neo-conservative religious groups in the area, which until recently had almost no rural reach. “Most people here used to worship at shrines,” says local Jamaat-e-Islami activist Bashir Ahmad Bhat, “and followed practices that were Hindu in origin. But my generation has learned to read, and thus discovered the true Islam.”
It is also likely that the new chauvinism has been propelled by the stresses of economic change. Shawl-Bafs have been hit hard by competition from cheap machine-embroidered shawls, often made in Ludhiana and Jalandhar. Embroidering shawls, moreover, is killing work: wages run as low as Rs. 80 a day for work which leaves many Shawl Bafs half-blind and arthritic before they turn 40.
But few young people in Chhattarhama, despite the spread of school and college education, have the kind of specialist skills needed to get new-economy jobs in the service or information-technology sectors. Even fewer have the kind of capital needed to set up independent businesses — or pay the bribes often needed to get a government job. All of these frustrations seem to have fed the anti-Shrine Board protest in Chhatterhama. Local clerics from the Jamaat Ahl-e-Hadis, Jamaat-e-Islami activists and National Conference workers all saw reason to fuel the chauvinist fears which underpinned the protests, seeing in them a possibility to expand their constituency. All of them seem to have won.Ironic twist
Have jihadists like the Lashkar also gained? The shrine in Chhatterhama would seem to suggest so — but the evidence is more ambiguous than the memorial suggests.
Notably, Lashkar ideologues most likely won’t approve of the Chhatterhama shrine. Jamaat Ahl-e-Hadis’ theological tradition — from which the Lashkar draws its legitimacy — disapproves of the veneration of shrines and relics, seeing them as heretical borrowings from Hinduism. In general, Lashkar jihadists’ graves consist of nothing more elaborate than a un-inscribed stone marker.
Indeed, Salafists — of whom the Ahl-e-Hadis are a subset — have often carried their hatred of shrine worship to great lengths. When the followers of the ultra-right Saudi Arabian cleric, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, captured the cities of Mecca and Medina in 1803-1804, they destroyed several shrines including one built over the tomb of the Prophet Mohammad’s daughter, Fatima Zehra.
“In Kashmir, everything eventually turns into a shrine,” says Mr. Ahmed, a wry smile on his face. “Come back here in a few years’ time, and you might just see people telling you that they have come here to pray for sons at the grave of a famous Pir [godman]”.
India - When two is company
With Mulayam Singh Yadav set to join hands with the Congress, the doctrine of equidistance from Congress and Sangh parivar is finally and formally dead. It is a different matter that its proponents, prominently the erstwhile Socialists, never practised it faithfully.
Five of the six constituents of the United National Progressive Alliance (UNPA) have had an alliance with the BJP at some point in time. With the Samajwadi Party (SP) inclined to go the Congress way, they will have to make their choices soon, their semantics about staying united notwithstanding. With the Congress and BJP both managing to lead successful alliances — the UPA and the NDA respectively — holding on to any middle ground has become an impossibility. There can only be two fronts.
Mulayam Singh Yadav was the last man standing, among the Socialists. All others have moved to either side already — for instance, the jd(u)’s Nitish Kumar is with the BJP and the RJD’s Lalu Prasad is with the Congress. Both were together for a long time, as votaries of non-Congress, non-Sangh politics. In states like Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Gujarat — where no vestige of erstwhile Socialist groups exists — individual leaders have chosen between the Congress and the BJP. Mulayam Singh Yadav stood till the last, locked in parallel battles with the Congress and the BJP. Now it is almost certain that the SP and the Congress will fight the next elections in alliance, because he finds “communalism a bigger enemy”.
The chaotic fragmentation of Indian politics, that led to numerous parties based on caste and regional identities, is now settling down into an equilibrium. Both at the state and national level, a bipolar system is taking shape. In 2005, in Bihar Ram Vilas Paswan’s LJP could not withstand this polarisation; in 2007 in UP, national parties — the Congress and the BJP — faced humiliating defeats when the SP and the BSP emerged primary contenders.
Recently in Karnataka, H.D. Deve Gowda’s JDS dreamt of being kingmaker in a hung assembly but ended up a distant third as voters gave an almost clear mandate in favour of the BJP. Parties and individuals who try to command influence disproportionate to their support base are increasingly facing the heat. At the national level, the Congress and the BJP will remain the nuclei of two poles, both set to win anything around 150 Lok Sabha seats each. No combination is likely to cross the halfway mark of 273 without including either the BJP or the Congress. Any party that hopes to stay relevant in national politics will have to choose between these two. Mulayam Singh and Amar Singh sensed this reality and jumped in favour of the ‘lesser evil’ at the first opportunity.
The Left and the CPI(M) had sensed this political reality long ago, but unfortunately painted themselves into a corner over the Indo-US nuclear deal debate. When the campaign was peaking for the Lok Sabha elections in 2004, the then CPI(M) general secretary, Harkishan Singh Surjeet, had declared that “there are only two fronts”. In the two-party congresses that followed, in 2005 and in 2008, the CPI(M) called for a ‘Third Alternative’. Ironically, it was the Left that theorised on the ‘lesser evil’ concept also, for instance, while making indirect alliance with the BJP in 1989 to defeat the Congress. Later, they decided that the BJP is the bigger evil and the Congress can be an ally. The Left has been complaining about Congress policies since 2004, but continued with its outside support to the UPA government to keep the ‘bigger evil’ the BJP out of power. Now they have decided to part ways with the Congress, but to what end?
Non-Samajwadi Party regional parties in the UNPA are likely to drift towards the BJP sooner or later. One thought, between the UPA and the NDA, the choice was obvious for the Left. By walking out on the UPA, does the Left want to fade into political insignificance?
Five of the six constituents of the United National Progressive Alliance (UNPA) have had an alliance with the BJP at some point in time. With the Samajwadi Party (SP) inclined to go the Congress way, they will have to make their choices soon, their semantics about staying united notwithstanding. With the Congress and BJP both managing to lead successful alliances — the UPA and the NDA respectively — holding on to any middle ground has become an impossibility. There can only be two fronts.
Mulayam Singh Yadav was the last man standing, among the Socialists. All others have moved to either side already — for instance, the jd(u)’s Nitish Kumar is with the BJP and the RJD’s Lalu Prasad is with the Congress. Both were together for a long time, as votaries of non-Congress, non-Sangh politics. In states like Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Gujarat — where no vestige of erstwhile Socialist groups exists — individual leaders have chosen between the Congress and the BJP. Mulayam Singh Yadav stood till the last, locked in parallel battles with the Congress and the BJP. Now it is almost certain that the SP and the Congress will fight the next elections in alliance, because he finds “communalism a bigger enemy”.
The chaotic fragmentation of Indian politics, that led to numerous parties based on caste and regional identities, is now settling down into an equilibrium. Both at the state and national level, a bipolar system is taking shape. In 2005, in Bihar Ram Vilas Paswan’s LJP could not withstand this polarisation; in 2007 in UP, national parties — the Congress and the BJP — faced humiliating defeats when the SP and the BSP emerged primary contenders.
Recently in Karnataka, H.D. Deve Gowda’s JDS dreamt of being kingmaker in a hung assembly but ended up a distant third as voters gave an almost clear mandate in favour of the BJP. Parties and individuals who try to command influence disproportionate to their support base are increasingly facing the heat. At the national level, the Congress and the BJP will remain the nuclei of two poles, both set to win anything around 150 Lok Sabha seats each. No combination is likely to cross the halfway mark of 273 without including either the BJP or the Congress. Any party that hopes to stay relevant in national politics will have to choose between these two. Mulayam Singh and Amar Singh sensed this reality and jumped in favour of the ‘lesser evil’ at the first opportunity.
The Left and the CPI(M) had sensed this political reality long ago, but unfortunately painted themselves into a corner over the Indo-US nuclear deal debate. When the campaign was peaking for the Lok Sabha elections in 2004, the then CPI(M) general secretary, Harkishan Singh Surjeet, had declared that “there are only two fronts”. In the two-party congresses that followed, in 2005 and in 2008, the CPI(M) called for a ‘Third Alternative’. Ironically, it was the Left that theorised on the ‘lesser evil’ concept also, for instance, while making indirect alliance with the BJP in 1989 to defeat the Congress. Later, they decided that the BJP is the bigger evil and the Congress can be an ally. The Left has been complaining about Congress policies since 2004, but continued with its outside support to the UPA government to keep the ‘bigger evil’ the BJP out of power. Now they have decided to part ways with the Congress, but to what end?
Non-Samajwadi Party regional parties in the UNPA are likely to drift towards the BJP sooner or later. One thought, between the UPA and the NDA, the choice was obvious for the Left. By walking out on the UPA, does the Left want to fade into political insignificance?
Business - Taxi+Drive = Smooth Ride
Down a bustling hallway, across a call-centre and rows of busy executives, Neeraj Gupta, MD of Meru Cabs, paces restlessly. It's almost 4 pm, and he hasn't come up with a new idea all day "Every day, I need to come up with one new idea to help further the business," he said, as the turquoise blue of his firm's Maruti Esteem taxis seeped into his cabin's large bay windows. "It gives me sleepless nights if I don't manage to."
IdeaOne thousand taxi drivers and a customer base of 30,000 passengers across the city are sure glad he came up the idea for a 24x7 call-taxi service in January 2007. An idea he got from Singapore's nearly 25,000-strong round-the-clock, on-call taxi service, which bowled him over.
BusinessIn July 2006, six months before he started up, the state government had announced it would grant licences to anyone who wanted to operate private taxi fleets.
His timing was perfect. Gupta set about creating his business plan. The 300 per cent growth of Gupta's four-year-old private fleet service V Links - from one bus to 13,000 vehicles - was testament to the fact Gupta was no Johnny-come-lately.
Over six months, he sat with global consulting firm Accenture's executives and convinced private equity firm India Value Fund to invest Rs 10 crore in the venture. He made three trips to Singapore to study its taxi system and finally sourced a state-of-the-art mobile communication device system - a mapping device to track the exact location of the taxi - from Australia at Rs 10 crore for 1,600 vehicles. His project was ready to roll.
"We carried out a survey on the passenger transport market and felt that Neeraj's concept had huge potential," said Prateek Roongta, vice president of the fund. "He had four solid years of experience in running a private fleet service - the perfect platform to securely invest in."
But manpower sourcing turned out to be a lot more difficult than Gupta had expected. The government had stopped issuing fresh permits to new drivers in 1997. "So we had to convince the existing black-and-yellow drivers to join us," said Gupta. "But the fear of losing their freedom to a corporate set-up with fixed works hours held most of them back."
But all it took was convincing the first batch of five to sign up in July 2007. "We told them that they were free to take as many street pick-ups as they wanted when they were not on call, as long as they submitted Rs 600 to the company daily," explained Sajid Rane, senior manager, operations at Meru cabs. "What they earned beyond this was theirs as the company managed maintenance and vehicular insurance."
The first batch of recruits then convinced their peers to make the switch. Within four months, the company had 1,000 drivers on its payroll. Mohammed Sheikh was one of them. He cannot believe how much his life has changed over the past nine months.
He is glad he took fleet service Meru Cabs up on its offer to Mumbai's taxi drivers: Trade your black-and-yellow taxi for an air-conditioned Maruti Esteem, wear a smart ochre and chocolate brown uniform and double your income.
It was a challenge when he changed over. The rattletrap had been the 32-year-old breadwinner's sole source of livelihood for two-and-a-half years, and helped him buy a one-room home in Mumbai. "But I don't regret my decision," said Sheikh of his giving up the familiar. "I now earn almost double what I did before, and my passengers treat me respectfully. I enjoy going to work everyday."
As Sheikh talks about the gifts he bought his family a month ago, ten clean shaven, uniformed men seated in the company's plush meeting room nod in unison to his testimony. Their lives changed too after they took a risk and changed course.
"As a Cool Cab driver, I would spend hours unengaged by the side of the road and make half the money I do today," said another Meru driver, whose earnings have even peaked to Rs 10,000 to Rs 12,000 a day over the last six months. "The permission to take both street pick-ups and phone appointments keeps me busy all day."
Success
Meru's drivers are not the only ones to praise Gupta's business plan. Smita Shrivastava, a corporate communications manager at Mastek India, uses only Meru cabs to ferry her to the airport for business trips. "I can be assured of a pick-up even if I make a call to Meru 10 minutes before I leave," she said. "The drivers are very polite and hand over a printed bill at the end of the journey. You feel safe knowing you are not being taken for a ride."
That's because Gupta's blueprint ensures that the entire service works with clockwork precision. A call on the helpline sets off a flashing red dot on a digital map stored in the call centre executive's computer. That helps him or her locate the caller's location and the number of engaged and free drivers in the vicinity.
The executive then sends a message with the caller's address to the closest free vehicle through the communication system. The address flashes across a digital screen inside the vehicle.
"I've timed the entire process," said Gupta, pointing to tiny maps with red and green dots across the call centre. "If executed perfectly, it shouldn't take more than two minutes. I've invested in GPS (global positioning system) and MCD (mobile communication device) because you will never be able to grow beyond a fleet of 200 without the right technology."
It's this eye for detail that is evident in Gupta's choice of drivers as well. Each of the 1,000 drivers has been picked after three rounds of scrutiny - a personal interview, a psychometric test and a five-day training programme at the Meru Academy, the small training division.
In fact, he picks just one percent of the 1,000 applications he receives every month. "One of the major complaints that customers had with the black-and-yellow cabs was bad driver behaviour," Gupta said. "We have to ensure that our drivers speak courteously, dress neatly and are on their best behaviour while on duty."
Erring drivers are counselled and put through monthly etiquette refresher courses.
Future
Gupta displays a similar perfectionism when chalking out his expansion plans. With his fleet of 500 having made a statement across Mumbai, Gupta is in the process of expanding to a fleet of 400 in Hyderabad, 250 in Delhi and 350 in Bangalore. And Roongta of private equity firm India Value Fund, which invested in Meru, said Gupta is bang on course. "Over the last year alone, Meru's services have grown so rapidly," he said. "Like all evolving economies, different transport formats will eventually co-exist, posing no threat to the other."
Gupta also has a team that is in charge of thoroughly researching the potential market in Chennai, Ahmedabad and Pune, with the aim of permeating every major metro by March 2009. "We're not even considering Kolkata, which already has a well-established private cab network," Gupta said. "But I am determined to have 5,000 Meru Cabs plying across the country by December. When your business plan is well thought-out, nothing can stop you from expanding."
IdeaOne thousand taxi drivers and a customer base of 30,000 passengers across the city are sure glad he came up the idea for a 24x7 call-taxi service in January 2007. An idea he got from Singapore's nearly 25,000-strong round-the-clock, on-call taxi service, which bowled him over.
BusinessIn July 2006, six months before he started up, the state government had announced it would grant licences to anyone who wanted to operate private taxi fleets.
His timing was perfect. Gupta set about creating his business plan. The 300 per cent growth of Gupta's four-year-old private fleet service V Links - from one bus to 13,000 vehicles - was testament to the fact Gupta was no Johnny-come-lately.
Over six months, he sat with global consulting firm Accenture's executives and convinced private equity firm India Value Fund to invest Rs 10 crore in the venture. He made three trips to Singapore to study its taxi system and finally sourced a state-of-the-art mobile communication device system - a mapping device to track the exact location of the taxi - from Australia at Rs 10 crore for 1,600 vehicles. His project was ready to roll.
"We carried out a survey on the passenger transport market and felt that Neeraj's concept had huge potential," said Prateek Roongta, vice president of the fund. "He had four solid years of experience in running a private fleet service - the perfect platform to securely invest in."
But manpower sourcing turned out to be a lot more difficult than Gupta had expected. The government had stopped issuing fresh permits to new drivers in 1997. "So we had to convince the existing black-and-yellow drivers to join us," said Gupta. "But the fear of losing their freedom to a corporate set-up with fixed works hours held most of them back."
But all it took was convincing the first batch of five to sign up in July 2007. "We told them that they were free to take as many street pick-ups as they wanted when they were not on call, as long as they submitted Rs 600 to the company daily," explained Sajid Rane, senior manager, operations at Meru cabs. "What they earned beyond this was theirs as the company managed maintenance and vehicular insurance."
The first batch of recruits then convinced their peers to make the switch. Within four months, the company had 1,000 drivers on its payroll. Mohammed Sheikh was one of them. He cannot believe how much his life has changed over the past nine months.
He is glad he took fleet service Meru Cabs up on its offer to Mumbai's taxi drivers: Trade your black-and-yellow taxi for an air-conditioned Maruti Esteem, wear a smart ochre and chocolate brown uniform and double your income.
It was a challenge when he changed over. The rattletrap had been the 32-year-old breadwinner's sole source of livelihood for two-and-a-half years, and helped him buy a one-room home in Mumbai. "But I don't regret my decision," said Sheikh of his giving up the familiar. "I now earn almost double what I did before, and my passengers treat me respectfully. I enjoy going to work everyday."
As Sheikh talks about the gifts he bought his family a month ago, ten clean shaven, uniformed men seated in the company's plush meeting room nod in unison to his testimony. Their lives changed too after they took a risk and changed course.
"As a Cool Cab driver, I would spend hours unengaged by the side of the road and make half the money I do today," said another Meru driver, whose earnings have even peaked to Rs 10,000 to Rs 12,000 a day over the last six months. "The permission to take both street pick-ups and phone appointments keeps me busy all day."
Success
Meru's drivers are not the only ones to praise Gupta's business plan. Smita Shrivastava, a corporate communications manager at Mastek India, uses only Meru cabs to ferry her to the airport for business trips. "I can be assured of a pick-up even if I make a call to Meru 10 minutes before I leave," she said. "The drivers are very polite and hand over a printed bill at the end of the journey. You feel safe knowing you are not being taken for a ride."
That's because Gupta's blueprint ensures that the entire service works with clockwork precision. A call on the helpline sets off a flashing red dot on a digital map stored in the call centre executive's computer. That helps him or her locate the caller's location and the number of engaged and free drivers in the vicinity.
The executive then sends a message with the caller's address to the closest free vehicle through the communication system. The address flashes across a digital screen inside the vehicle.
"I've timed the entire process," said Gupta, pointing to tiny maps with red and green dots across the call centre. "If executed perfectly, it shouldn't take more than two minutes. I've invested in GPS (global positioning system) and MCD (mobile communication device) because you will never be able to grow beyond a fleet of 200 without the right technology."
It's this eye for detail that is evident in Gupta's choice of drivers as well. Each of the 1,000 drivers has been picked after three rounds of scrutiny - a personal interview, a psychometric test and a five-day training programme at the Meru Academy, the small training division.
In fact, he picks just one percent of the 1,000 applications he receives every month. "One of the major complaints that customers had with the black-and-yellow cabs was bad driver behaviour," Gupta said. "We have to ensure that our drivers speak courteously, dress neatly and are on their best behaviour while on duty."
Erring drivers are counselled and put through monthly etiquette refresher courses.
Future
Gupta displays a similar perfectionism when chalking out his expansion plans. With his fleet of 500 having made a statement across Mumbai, Gupta is in the process of expanding to a fleet of 400 in Hyderabad, 250 in Delhi and 350 in Bangalore. And Roongta of private equity firm India Value Fund, which invested in Meru, said Gupta is bang on course. "Over the last year alone, Meru's services have grown so rapidly," he said. "Like all evolving economies, different transport formats will eventually co-exist, posing no threat to the other."
Gupta also has a team that is in charge of thoroughly researching the potential market in Chennai, Ahmedabad and Pune, with the aim of permeating every major metro by March 2009. "We're not even considering Kolkata, which already has a well-established private cab network," Gupta said. "But I am determined to have 5,000 Meru Cabs plying across the country by December. When your business plan is well thought-out, nothing can stop you from expanding."
Lifestyle - Trading Faces
Marks, admissions, wardrobe, cosmetic surgery.. students starting college have a new list of priorities. Cosmetic surgeons have reported a significant rise in the number of students who want a little nip and tuck before venturing into campus land. The demand is highest for nose jobs, ear surgery scar removals and , liposuction. “Most youngsters who come for these procedures are between 18 and 21,” says Dr Anup Dhir, senior cosmetic surgeon, who receives about 20 inquries in a month.
Dr Dhir’s most recent client was a 17-year-old boy, who came in for gynecomastia (male breast reduction). Girls in their late teens come for breast augmentation and boys for breast reduction and perma nent removal of chest hair.
“Most male models have to take off their shirts, so an extra-hairy chest is a bit of an embarrassment,” says the doctor. “However, the demand is highest for mole removals and nose jobs.” Celeb lookalikes Dr Vimal Malik, cosmetic surgeon, says that more and more teens are asking for rhinoplasty (nose job), tummy tuck and lip reduction and enhancement. “Some youngsters want to resemble celebrities. They say ‘I want to join the college fashion society or a sports contest and want the Sania Mirza’s look’.” Harpreet Kaur, 19, who comes from a small town in the north, says that she was called ‘makkhi kudi’ in school because of a big mole on her nose. Before she joined a city college, her uncle had the mole surgically removed.
Suhani Shetty, student, opted for cosmetic surgery to see a ‘dramatic’ change in her appearance. “I was 70 kilos. I got liposuction done in the morning, was discharged in the evening and continued with my everyday life the next day Now, I’m 60 kilos, and on . cloud nine.” Expensive fix Depressed youngsters are using surgery as a crutch said Dr Rahul Chandhok, consultant psychiatrist:“Even if surgery is performed it won’t satisfy them. Expert counselling is required.” Cosmetic surgery doesn’t comes with a price, of course. Liposuction costs around Rs 40,000, an ear job Rs 25,000 and male breast reduction Rs 40,000. However, parents are enthusiastically funding these surgeries, says Dr Dhir. An alternative When they don’t, students work in call centers to raise the money. Some even come in without parental consent, little realising that surgery cannot be performed without their written go-ahead.
Dr Dhir concludes, “One should not resort to surgery because it is easier, quicker and effective. A regular exercise routine and a weight control can do the trick for most.”
Dr Dhir’s most recent client was a 17-year-old boy, who came in for gynecomastia (male breast reduction). Girls in their late teens come for breast augmentation and boys for breast reduction and perma nent removal of chest hair.
“Most male models have to take off their shirts, so an extra-hairy chest is a bit of an embarrassment,” says the doctor. “However, the demand is highest for mole removals and nose jobs.” Celeb lookalikes Dr Vimal Malik, cosmetic surgeon, says that more and more teens are asking for rhinoplasty (nose job), tummy tuck and lip reduction and enhancement. “Some youngsters want to resemble celebrities. They say ‘I want to join the college fashion society or a sports contest and want the Sania Mirza’s look’.” Harpreet Kaur, 19, who comes from a small town in the north, says that she was called ‘makkhi kudi’ in school because of a big mole on her nose. Before she joined a city college, her uncle had the mole surgically removed.
Suhani Shetty, student, opted for cosmetic surgery to see a ‘dramatic’ change in her appearance. “I was 70 kilos. I got liposuction done in the morning, was discharged in the evening and continued with my everyday life the next day Now, I’m 60 kilos, and on . cloud nine.” Expensive fix Depressed youngsters are using surgery as a crutch said Dr Rahul Chandhok, consultant psychiatrist:“Even if surgery is performed it won’t satisfy them. Expert counselling is required.” Cosmetic surgery doesn’t comes with a price, of course. Liposuction costs around Rs 40,000, an ear job Rs 25,000 and male breast reduction Rs 40,000. However, parents are enthusiastically funding these surgeries, says Dr Dhir. An alternative When they don’t, students work in call centers to raise the money. Some even come in without parental consent, little realising that surgery cannot be performed without their written go-ahead.
Dr Dhir concludes, “One should not resort to surgery because it is easier, quicker and effective. A regular exercise routine and a weight control can do the trick for most.”
Columnist - V.R.Krishna Iyer
Submitting to this nuclear deal is unbecoming and unfortunate — especially when it comes from a Prime Minister who is clean, fine and humane.
Indian humanity has been divided communally and trivialised ideologically. Economically it is dollar-dominated. It is pathologically politicised. It has been priced out mega-litigatively from judicial justice. It has devalued swaraj and tended to oblige lame-duck President George Bush to serve the interests of America Inc. In the process, it has lost self-respect and self-reliance, going so far as to sign an obviable and obnoxious nuclear treaty.
The masses plead with the pro-tem, but inflexibly firm, Prime Minister: do defend ‘US,’ not the U.S. Do compassionately consider the Panch Sheel commandments of swaraj since the masses are sinking under asphyxiant inflation. Do break and banish the Iron Curtain between the political parties and the people, do feel for the have-nots and win them back. Do this for the sake of Bharat, swadeshi and swaraj.
The fatal crisis suffocating Indian humanity right now is higher-than-ever inflation. Never has people’s survival been in such peril, and so poignantly, as it is today. Why should the Prime Minister of a great country be so utterly committed to the U.S.? Let us recall the country’s first Prime Minister telling an earlier U.S. President that India was no international mendicant. This nuclear deal submission is unbecoming and unfortunate: it is a bizarre secret. And to think that it comes from Dr. Manmohan Singh — an otherwise clean, fine, humane statesman. My patriotic plea is straight: do jettison this surrender to the Yankee.
Solar, hydel, tidal, wind farm-oriented and geothermal energy sources are abundant. Then there are other sources that, if fully explored and exploited, can gain for India energy swaraj. Beware of radiation and other thanatological-technological possibilities. The U.S. and Russia know at their own cost the horrendous hazards of nuclear power plants. But U.S. nuclear big business seeks to dump them on India, assuming it to be a meek, weak nation. But India is a non-aligned power.
There should be a 10-year moratorium on any new foreign investment and any import of luxury items. No more should we have the bankrupting impact of foreign business. We must restrict the profit-grabbing car factories and the insatiably frantic buyers so as to sustain our economic self-reliance and solvency as a critically democratic mandate. Our neo-colonial financial globalism is a source of grave danger, great disaster and grim despair. Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi used India-made Ambassador cars and did not ever allow insane levels of import.
We need the immediate and harsh enforcement of a law that prohibits hoarding and profiteering, black market pricing and racketeering, as was done during the period of the Second World War. These social justice commands ought to be imposed under a comprehensive Defence of India Code with powers of summary search, seizure, confiscation and severe sentence. Lawless cornering and anti-social privatisation should no more be allowed. Defend the people’s right now by rationing all essential commodities and services, petrol and electricity. Social and economic waste disguised as festivals, political, religious and other practices, should be banished through resort to deterrent penalties. We are at war for the sake of economic survival.
India should abolish or minimise all avoidable expenditure, including the expensive perquisites of heads of state, Ministers, judges and legislators. Alcoholism during festivals, celebrations and flashy functions should be banned. All five-star establishments, public and private, should be abolished. Fair but moderate prices for boarding and lodging should be fixed. Limits should be placed on feasts, rents and travel fares. Consumer extravagance and showy expenditure should be banned on a war footing. The justification is the present scarcities, poverty pressures and necessitous regard for the right to life of the larger Indian community.
As an Emergency measure and as part of a pro-tem economy drive, an overall Defence of Bharat Code should be enacted. A free nation’s lot is not “blood, sweat, toil and tears” but dignity with austerity, without loot and violence. Survival of Indians, not of the U.S. nuclear deal and bourgeois consumerist profligacy, is democratic patriotism. All else is anti-national terrorism.
To wipe every tear from every eye is our tryst with the destiny of the current generation — cricket scores, beauty contests and reality shows are not the priorities. The rule of law shall sustain the rule of life. A wall of separation, an iron curtain between politicians in power and people in privation, is the cruel social malignancy. Political parties sign away India’s freedom through nuclear deals, Smart City sellouts and big-business stratagems. They try to run away from elections and the people, seeking opportunist coalitions. They make it seem that fatal inflation is a global phenomenon.
Dear Prime Minister: you are clean, green, simple and straight. Do save, and not drown, the billion-plus lives whose trustee you, Parliament and the Judiciary are. We must, and we can, win our long march to victory, given the will. Therefore, every party and every social, religious and regional organisation, shall struggle patriotically to tear to pieces the political-communal-economic Iron Curtain that is divisive.
Indian humanity has been divided communally and trivialised ideologically. Economically it is dollar-dominated. It is pathologically politicised. It has been priced out mega-litigatively from judicial justice. It has devalued swaraj and tended to oblige lame-duck President George Bush to serve the interests of America Inc. In the process, it has lost self-respect and self-reliance, going so far as to sign an obviable and obnoxious nuclear treaty.
The masses plead with the pro-tem, but inflexibly firm, Prime Minister: do defend ‘US,’ not the U.S. Do compassionately consider the Panch Sheel commandments of swaraj since the masses are sinking under asphyxiant inflation. Do break and banish the Iron Curtain between the political parties and the people, do feel for the have-nots and win them back. Do this for the sake of Bharat, swadeshi and swaraj.
The fatal crisis suffocating Indian humanity right now is higher-than-ever inflation. Never has people’s survival been in such peril, and so poignantly, as it is today. Why should the Prime Minister of a great country be so utterly committed to the U.S.? Let us recall the country’s first Prime Minister telling an earlier U.S. President that India was no international mendicant. This nuclear deal submission is unbecoming and unfortunate: it is a bizarre secret. And to think that it comes from Dr. Manmohan Singh — an otherwise clean, fine, humane statesman. My patriotic plea is straight: do jettison this surrender to the Yankee.
Solar, hydel, tidal, wind farm-oriented and geothermal energy sources are abundant. Then there are other sources that, if fully explored and exploited, can gain for India energy swaraj. Beware of radiation and other thanatological-technological possibilities. The U.S. and Russia know at their own cost the horrendous hazards of nuclear power plants. But U.S. nuclear big business seeks to dump them on India, assuming it to be a meek, weak nation. But India is a non-aligned power.
There should be a 10-year moratorium on any new foreign investment and any import of luxury items. No more should we have the bankrupting impact of foreign business. We must restrict the profit-grabbing car factories and the insatiably frantic buyers so as to sustain our economic self-reliance and solvency as a critically democratic mandate. Our neo-colonial financial globalism is a source of grave danger, great disaster and grim despair. Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi used India-made Ambassador cars and did not ever allow insane levels of import.
We need the immediate and harsh enforcement of a law that prohibits hoarding and profiteering, black market pricing and racketeering, as was done during the period of the Second World War. These social justice commands ought to be imposed under a comprehensive Defence of India Code with powers of summary search, seizure, confiscation and severe sentence. Lawless cornering and anti-social privatisation should no more be allowed. Defend the people’s right now by rationing all essential commodities and services, petrol and electricity. Social and economic waste disguised as festivals, political, religious and other practices, should be banished through resort to deterrent penalties. We are at war for the sake of economic survival.
India should abolish or minimise all avoidable expenditure, including the expensive perquisites of heads of state, Ministers, judges and legislators. Alcoholism during festivals, celebrations and flashy functions should be banned. All five-star establishments, public and private, should be abolished. Fair but moderate prices for boarding and lodging should be fixed. Limits should be placed on feasts, rents and travel fares. Consumer extravagance and showy expenditure should be banned on a war footing. The justification is the present scarcities, poverty pressures and necessitous regard for the right to life of the larger Indian community.
As an Emergency measure and as part of a pro-tem economy drive, an overall Defence of Bharat Code should be enacted. A free nation’s lot is not “blood, sweat, toil and tears” but dignity with austerity, without loot and violence. Survival of Indians, not of the U.S. nuclear deal and bourgeois consumerist profligacy, is democratic patriotism. All else is anti-national terrorism.
To wipe every tear from every eye is our tryst with the destiny of the current generation — cricket scores, beauty contests and reality shows are not the priorities. The rule of law shall sustain the rule of life. A wall of separation, an iron curtain between politicians in power and people in privation, is the cruel social malignancy. Political parties sign away India’s freedom through nuclear deals, Smart City sellouts and big-business stratagems. They try to run away from elections and the people, seeking opportunist coalitions. They make it seem that fatal inflation is a global phenomenon.
Dear Prime Minister: you are clean, green, simple and straight. Do save, and not drown, the billion-plus lives whose trustee you, Parliament and the Judiciary are. We must, and we can, win our long march to victory, given the will. Therefore, every party and every social, religious and regional organisation, shall struggle patriotically to tear to pieces the political-communal-economic Iron Curtain that is divisive.
India - A bioscope in every village
Sramana Mitra is a technology entrepreneur and strategy consultant in Silicon Valley. She has founded 3 companies and writes a business blog, Sramana Mitra on Strategy at ww.sramanamitra.com. She has a master’s in electrical engineering and computer science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Sramana invites readers to take a journey with her into the future through the minds of multiple entrepreneurs, who, by addressing the opportunities she sees today, will perhaps shape the future of India. She asks readers to close their eyes and exist in this future — in 2020, as it were — and BE each an entrepreneurOr, how we groomed 3 million micro-entrepreneurs in 12 yearsProfessor Raj Reddy at Carnegie Mellon University first urged me to look at micro-franchise as a vehicle for economic development. Today, micro-finance has become a world-renowned phenomenon, especially with Dr Yunus’ Nobel Prize two years back. Micro-franchise is a relatively lesser known, but equally powerful, model. In simple terms, it is a “franchise” business that has a centralised “strategy” arm that masterminds, trains and supports the building of a large number of small businesses that are replicas of the same concept.I wanted to start a set of ventures in India using micro-franchise as a tool. The first of these was Bioscope.There are approximately 6 lakh villages in India. About 600 million people live in these villages. Needless to say, a large portion of this population is poor. The villages do not have many amenities.I have been to some of these villages. In December 2005, we spent a vacation travelling in North Bengal. One Himalayan village that we spent a night in was Lava. At sundown, the village goes to sleep. There is nothing to do. Consequently, alcohol is often a friendly companion to pass time.As I started thinking about Bioscope, alcohol versus entertainment was on my mind. What if we created an alternative entertainment vehicle, one that was more appealing than alcohol?Thus began our journey of building a chain of “community screens” throughout the heartland of India in 2009.At the heart of Bioscope was a media server that contained about 5,000 Bollywood movies with appropriate licensing rights, a projector and a screen. This was not a full-fledged movie theatre, but more an elaborate home theatre kind of set-up.Our franchisees would rent a large room in the village that could seat about 35 people, and effectively run a small movie theatre business. Three films were shown every day, and villagers were charged a small fee to watch them.We made arrangements with several banks to finance these franchises with micro-loans. Bioscope was the guarantor for all loans.In five years, we had presence in 1 lakh villages.Our business plan, however, was not to build a non-profit. We wanted to build a network that would give us a media channel to reach the few hundred million people of rural India who cannot afford television sets, and are therefore off the regular media grid.Gradually, we hooked our franchisees up with a central server, such that we could transmit advertisements and other kinds of video clips to be shown before films and during intermissions. We were not streaming video, so the network connection did not need to be super high bandwidth.We sold advertising to our network of rural viewers at a premium. As our penetration numbers climbed, the advertising rates we could command also improved.Meanwhile, an interesting social dynamic was developing in the villages around Bioscope. Villagers started treating the screenings as their primary place to see and be seen. They would dress up, socialise, conduct match-makings.We facilitated the process by introducing food and drinks at the screenings. We even encouraged potlucks.As the community bonded, Bioscope’s power to influence word-of-mouth increased exponentially. Not only were our advertisers aware of this power, the politicians were, too. We became one of the primary channels of political advertising. We were also an excellent channel for spreading educational messages about topics such as birth control, reproductive health, women’s empowerment, micro-finance, and micro-franchise.In fact, we started collaborating with banks with significant micro-finance programmes and other micro-franchise ventures, and made it infinitely easier for them to market and scale each of their businesses.Of course, we had programmes that tied into these ancillary ventures. For example, we started our own “citizen journalism” effort, where each village had a reporter who was trained to take a video camera and capture success stories about micro-entrepreneurs. Success stories from one village were played not only in that village, but in other villages, making celebrities of our micro-heroes. The entire programme was financed by Citibank’s micro-lending arm as an advertising campaign.We also created independent programming about the socio-political issues that citizens of a successful democracy should understand.In 2020, having achieved penetration into 3 lakh villages, we stepped back to take stock.Bioscope looks a lot like the early days of the movie theatre, except we had fused the format with modern concepts like the video library, digital storage, media server, portable projectors, user-generated content, citizen-journalism and a lot of other innovations.In the last decade, we have helped groom almost 3 million new micro-entrepreneurs, and we have helped develop a socio-political consciousness in rural India.Not bad!
Sports - The Nirmal Shekar Column
London: They’ve been doing this for a while — for almost two full decades, that is. And they are not finished yet.
From the time they first played each other on a pock-marked disused parking lot in the seedy, dangerous, drug-infested Los Angeles suburb of Compton, Venus Williams and Serena Williams have enjoyed their sister acts.
If tennis fans are not particularly fond of these family affairs, then so be it. Remember, there are 126 others in a Grand Slam draw. It is just that nobody else was good enough to get as far as the Williamses in the 122nd Wimbledon championships.
Come Saturday, then, the latest episode in the long running Williams versus Williams soap will be enacted at the All England Lawn Tennis Club.
While Venus Williams, the defending champion, stamped out the Russian Elena Dementieva’s second set resistance to post a 6-1, 7-6(3) victory, Serena did much the same thing against the gutsy little Jie Zheng from China, winning 6-2, 7-6(5).
Venus and Serena have played each other three times in the past at Wimbledon, Venus winning a semifinal encounter in 2000 before losing to her younger sister in the finals of 2002 and 2003.
Zheng played wonderfully aggressive tennis in the second set, opening up a 4-2 lead. But the sheer power of Serena’s groundstrokes, apart from her experience and serving might, saw the former champion wriggle out of trouble.
After breaking back to 3-4, Serena saved a setpoint in the 12th game before taking control of the tie-break. It ended in anti-climax as Zheng, facing her first matchpoint, sent down a double fault.Seventh final
Venus got off the blocks like Michael Schumacher from pole position and raced to a 4-0 lead, fighting off four breakpoints in the second game. Not much later, she pocketed the first set with a high crosscourt volley executed with the sort of grace and athleticism that would have made the late Alicia Markova proud.
There is, indeed, a gasp-inducing balletic grace to Venus’s movements on the court. The arms and legs that seem to go on forever and ever produce an image of surreal beauty in the heat of battle as if she were an impressionist’s vision brought to life on the lawns.
Whether Dementieva herself was lost in the appreciation of her opponent’s art is hard to say. But the willowy Russian did enter the scene as a competitor in the third game of the second set after losing eight of the first nine in the match.
A lucky winner off the tape saw Dementieva hold to 1-2 and this boosted her confidence as she matched the champion shot for shot from the baseline and served with power and intelligence. A tie-break was inevitable.
“She was really, really tight in the end of the match. I had some opportunity. It [the second set] was a completely different game,” said Dementieva.
What she forgot to mention was that she was just as nervous in the tie-break, making a flurry of forehand errors after Venus, surprisingly, lost two successive points on serve from 2-1.
A Dementieva backhand that sailed over the baseline gave Venus three matchpoints and the Russian put a forehand in the net to make sure that the champion wasn’t stretched.
“She [Dementieva is a similar player who plays with a lot of power. I had to play well,” said Venus after making her seventh final here. “I am looking forward to that final.”
In a men’s quarterfinal match which was suspended on Wednesday night because of poor light with the contestants tied a set apiece, Rainer Schuettler of Germany outlasted Arnaud Clement of France 6-3, 5-7, 7-6(6), 6-7(7), 8-6 on Thursday to earn himself a shot at Rafael Nadal.Masterly Nadal
On Wednesday night, Rafael Nadal had his first brush with perfection on grass. As awe-inspiring as it was, it wouldn’t have been a pretty sight to British eyes. For, the soaring Spaniard turned the most eagerly awaited contest of the first 10 days into a distressingly lopsided match as he out-thought, out-muscled and outclassed Andy Murray 6-3, 6-2, 6-4 to sprint into the semifinals.
In tennis, perfection comes in many styles. But, since we saw the last of Pete Sampras here, only one man — Roger Federer — could lay claim to it, until Wednesday, that is.
As good as he was last year when he almost took the match away from the serial-champion in the fifth set of the final, Nadal, in the sort of form he was against Murray, was almost unrecognisable as the player who had lost two finals to Federer.
As a make-over, this seems more like magic; for, the newly minted version of Nadal on grass seems so much a better player.
His serve is a much bigger weapon now and there is a greater variety to it. And the whipping, high-bounding forehands are now mixed with the hard, flatter variety that makes the ball stay low.
What is more, his extraordinary anticipation and court coverage are now backed by a wonderful tactical maturity that turns him into a near-invincible competitor.Laser-like precision
If Murray found the Spaniard’s serves too hot to handle — Nadal lost just 10 points on serve in the match — then the four-time French champion’s groundstrokes had the precision of lasers.
As winners flashed past him like so many yellow missiles, Murray was shell-shocked and often shook his head in disbelief — as did 15,000-plus fans in the centre court stands.
“I think this is the best I’ve played at Wimbledon, especially in the second set,” said Nadal.
Despite the pounding, Murray was gracious in defeat. “Nadal has a great chance of beating Federer. If he plays that well, I think he is close to being the favourite to win the tournament. He was very close last year and he is playing better than last year.”
From the time they first played each other on a pock-marked disused parking lot in the seedy, dangerous, drug-infested Los Angeles suburb of Compton, Venus Williams and Serena Williams have enjoyed their sister acts.
If tennis fans are not particularly fond of these family affairs, then so be it. Remember, there are 126 others in a Grand Slam draw. It is just that nobody else was good enough to get as far as the Williamses in the 122nd Wimbledon championships.
Come Saturday, then, the latest episode in the long running Williams versus Williams soap will be enacted at the All England Lawn Tennis Club.
While Venus Williams, the defending champion, stamped out the Russian Elena Dementieva’s second set resistance to post a 6-1, 7-6(3) victory, Serena did much the same thing against the gutsy little Jie Zheng from China, winning 6-2, 7-6(5).
Venus and Serena have played each other three times in the past at Wimbledon, Venus winning a semifinal encounter in 2000 before losing to her younger sister in the finals of 2002 and 2003.
Zheng played wonderfully aggressive tennis in the second set, opening up a 4-2 lead. But the sheer power of Serena’s groundstrokes, apart from her experience and serving might, saw the former champion wriggle out of trouble.
After breaking back to 3-4, Serena saved a setpoint in the 12th game before taking control of the tie-break. It ended in anti-climax as Zheng, facing her first matchpoint, sent down a double fault.Seventh final
Venus got off the blocks like Michael Schumacher from pole position and raced to a 4-0 lead, fighting off four breakpoints in the second game. Not much later, she pocketed the first set with a high crosscourt volley executed with the sort of grace and athleticism that would have made the late Alicia Markova proud.
There is, indeed, a gasp-inducing balletic grace to Venus’s movements on the court. The arms and legs that seem to go on forever and ever produce an image of surreal beauty in the heat of battle as if she were an impressionist’s vision brought to life on the lawns.
Whether Dementieva herself was lost in the appreciation of her opponent’s art is hard to say. But the willowy Russian did enter the scene as a competitor in the third game of the second set after losing eight of the first nine in the match.
A lucky winner off the tape saw Dementieva hold to 1-2 and this boosted her confidence as she matched the champion shot for shot from the baseline and served with power and intelligence. A tie-break was inevitable.
“She was really, really tight in the end of the match. I had some opportunity. It [the second set] was a completely different game,” said Dementieva.
What she forgot to mention was that she was just as nervous in the tie-break, making a flurry of forehand errors after Venus, surprisingly, lost two successive points on serve from 2-1.
A Dementieva backhand that sailed over the baseline gave Venus three matchpoints and the Russian put a forehand in the net to make sure that the champion wasn’t stretched.
“She [Dementieva is a similar player who plays with a lot of power. I had to play well,” said Venus after making her seventh final here. “I am looking forward to that final.”
In a men’s quarterfinal match which was suspended on Wednesday night because of poor light with the contestants tied a set apiece, Rainer Schuettler of Germany outlasted Arnaud Clement of France 6-3, 5-7, 7-6(6), 6-7(7), 8-6 on Thursday to earn himself a shot at Rafael Nadal.Masterly Nadal
On Wednesday night, Rafael Nadal had his first brush with perfection on grass. As awe-inspiring as it was, it wouldn’t have been a pretty sight to British eyes. For, the soaring Spaniard turned the most eagerly awaited contest of the first 10 days into a distressingly lopsided match as he out-thought, out-muscled and outclassed Andy Murray 6-3, 6-2, 6-4 to sprint into the semifinals.
In tennis, perfection comes in many styles. But, since we saw the last of Pete Sampras here, only one man — Roger Federer — could lay claim to it, until Wednesday, that is.
As good as he was last year when he almost took the match away from the serial-champion in the fifth set of the final, Nadal, in the sort of form he was against Murray, was almost unrecognisable as the player who had lost two finals to Federer.
As a make-over, this seems more like magic; for, the newly minted version of Nadal on grass seems so much a better player.
His serve is a much bigger weapon now and there is a greater variety to it. And the whipping, high-bounding forehands are now mixed with the hard, flatter variety that makes the ball stay low.
What is more, his extraordinary anticipation and court coverage are now backed by a wonderful tactical maturity that turns him into a near-invincible competitor.Laser-like precision
If Murray found the Spaniard’s serves too hot to handle — Nadal lost just 10 points on serve in the match — then the four-time French champion’s groundstrokes had the precision of lasers.
As winners flashed past him like so many yellow missiles, Murray was shell-shocked and often shook his head in disbelief — as did 15,000-plus fans in the centre court stands.
“I think this is the best I’ve played at Wimbledon, especially in the second set,” said Nadal.
Despite the pounding, Murray was gracious in defeat. “Nadal has a great chance of beating Federer. If he plays that well, I think he is close to being the favourite to win the tournament. He was very close last year and he is playing better than last year.”
Entertainment - Friends Movie ?
TV’s most beloved pals, ‘Friends’, might be there for you on the 70mm screen sooner than you think. The highly anticipated film production of the famous television series has finally been given the go-ahead. Rumours of a reunion for the six Friends stars Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer, Matthew Perry and Matt LeBlanc have been around ever since the show ended in 2004. The cast is now reported to have signed up for a movie version, produced by Warner Bros, with filming scheduled to start within the next 18 months. “Jennifer, Courtney and the rest of the cast are keen to reprise their roles, under the right circumstances. The success of ‘Sex and the City’ has really got their wheels spinning about how a Friends film could be just as big, if done right,” the Telegraph quoted a source, as saying. “Timing and the script are really important, but now that Courteney and Jen both have production companies, they can potentially get very involved in those decisions,” the source says. Cox has made no secret of her desire to get the gang back together for one last outing but Aniston has been reluctant. “As the biggest star of the Friends franchise, Jennifer can’t help but look at what’s happened with Sarah Jessica Parker and the Sex and the City film and be a little jealous. What’s held back a Friends movie so far is that people were worried that Jennifer had simply become too famous to play Rachel again,” the source says.“But the truth is that Jennifer is finally willing to do it, and she’d love to work with that whole team of actors and producers again. She says she and Courteney have already talked this summer about what they want out of a Friends movie, and if deals can be made with them, everything else can fall into place rather quickly.”
Jul 3, 2008
Week 2 - Day 4 is over
Hi,
Today is been a good day ! We finally decided to have keywords to distinguish posts.Think we did close to 45 posts today which i guess is the highest we have had.Think the keyword in the title is a good idea,Me & paramesh got together to decide on doing the same.Iam hoping to continue the good form of today to tommorrow.So expect more good reads from me.Time is 1834 hrs IST now.So i guess it is a good time to signout.Iam hoping to start off with my first post ( The Bio - blog) this weekend.Still thinking about a good topic to start with.Will keep you posted anyway
Till tommorrow Enjoy Readin !
Sri
Oops i forgot - We crossed 200 posts today ;-)
Today is been a good day ! We finally decided to have keywords to distinguish posts.Think we did close to 45 posts today which i guess is the highest we have had.Think the keyword in the title is a good idea,Me & paramesh got together to decide on doing the same.Iam hoping to continue the good form of today to tommorrow.So expect more good reads from me.Time is 1834 hrs IST now.So i guess it is a good time to signout.Iam hoping to start off with my first post ( The Bio - blog) this weekend.Still thinking about a good topic to start with.Will keep you posted anyway
Till tommorrow Enjoy Readin !
Sri
Oops i forgot - We crossed 200 posts today ;-)
Business - The meaning of Bill Gates
WHEN Bill Gates helped to found Microsoft 33 years ago there was a company rule that no employees should work for a boss who wrote worse computer code than they did. Just five years later, with Microsoft choking on its own growth, Mr Gates hired a business manager, Steve Ballmer, who had cut his teeth at Procter & Gamble, which sells soap. The founder had chucked his coding rule out of the window.
In becoming the world’s richest man, Mr Gates’s unswerving self-belief has repeatedly been punctuated by that sort of pragmatism. But those qualities have never been on such public display as they were this week, when the outstanding businessman of his age stepped back from a life’s work.
As Microsoft’s non-executive chairman, Mr Gates will devote most of his efforts to his charitable foundation, where he will pit himself against malaria and poverty, rather than Google and the Department of Justice. To choose such formidable new foes in the middle of your life takes bags of self-belief, but it is also pragmatic—and a little poignant. Mr Gates has revelled in the day-to-day details of running his firm. To let it all go is to acknowledge that his best work at Microsoft is behind him. It is to accept that the innovator’s curse is to be transitory.
MS DOS and don’ts
As with many great innovations, Mr Gates’s vision has come to seem so obvious that it is hard to imagine the world any other way. Yet, early on, he grasped two things that were far from obvious at the time, and he grasped them more clearly and pursued them more fiercely than his rivals did at Commodore, MITS or even Apple.
The first was that computing could be a high-volume, low-margin business. Until Microsoft came along, the big money was in maintaining a select family of very grand mainframes. Mr Gates realised that falling hardware costs, combined with the negligible expense of making extra copies of standard software, would turn the computer business on its head. Personal computers could be “on every desk and in every home”. Profit would come from selling a lot of them cheaply, not servicing a few at a great price. And the company that won a large market share at the start would prevail later on.
Mr Gates also realised that making hardware and writing software could be stronger as separate businesses. Even as firms like Apple clung on to both the computer operating system and the hardware—just as mainframe companies had—Microsoft and Intel, which designed the PC’s microprocessors, blew computing’s business model apart. Hardware and software companies innovated in an ecosystem that the Wintel duopoly tightly controlled and—in spite of the bugs and crashes—used to reap vast economies of scale and profits. When mighty IBM unwittingly granted Microsoft the right to sell its PC operating system to other hardware firms, it did not see that it was creating legions of rivals for itself. Mr Gates did.
The technology industry likes to sneer at Microsoft as a follower. And it is true that the company has time and again bought in or imitated the technology of others. That very first PC operating system was based on someone else’s code. But Mr Gates’s invention was as a businessman. His genius was to understand what he needed and work out how to obtain it, however long it took. In an industry in which visionaries are often sniffy about anyone else’s ideas, the readiness to go elsewhere proved a devastating advantage.
And look at what happened when Mr Gates’s pragmatism failed him. Within Microsoft, they feared Bill for his relentless intellect, his grasp of detail and his brutal intolerance of anyone whom he thought “dumb”. But the legal system doesn’t do fear, and in a filmed deposition, when Microsoft was had up for being anti-competitive, the hectoring, irascible Mr Gates, rocking slightly in his chair, came across as spoilt and arrogant. It was a rare public airing of the sense of brainy entitlement that emboldened Mr Gates to get the world to yield to his will. On those rare occasions when Microsoft’s fortunes depended upon Mr Gates yielding to the world instead, the pragmatic circuit-breaker would kick in. In the antitrust case it did not, and, as this newspaper argued at the time (see article), he was lucky that it did not lead to the break-up of his company.
Inevitability and temperament are two hallmarks of Gates the innovator. The third is the transience of all pioneers. The argument was brilliantly laid out by Clayton Christensen, of Harvard Business School. The perfecting of a technology by a well managed company catering to its best customers leaves it vulnerable to “disruption” by a cheaper, scrappier alternative that is good enough for everyone else. That could be a description of Microsoft’s Office, which now does more than almost anybody could wish for—even as Google and others are offering free basic word-processors and spreadsheets online.
Mr Gates was haunted by Mr Christensen’s insight—he even asked for his help to keep back the tide. Microsoft successfully extended Windows as an operating system for servers; it has moved into new areas, such as mobile devices and video games; and it has lavished billions of dollars on all sorts of research—without much to show for it. Despite all those efforts, the PC, Mr Gates’s obsession, has ended up as an internet terminal. The company still has everything to prove online (see article). Watching Microsoft in the company of Google and Facebook is a bit like watching your dad trying to be cool.
Business is good for you
Mr Gates had the good fortune to be perfectly suited for his time—but he is less well-equipped for the collaborative and fragmented era of internet computing. This does not diminish his achievement. Nor, as some would have it, does his philanthropy necessarily magnify it. Whatever the corporate-social-responsibility gurus say, business is a force for good in itself: its most useful contribution to society is making profits and products. Philanthropy no more canonises the good businessman than it exculpates the bad. In spite of his flaws, Mr Gates is one of the good kind. Some great industrialists, like Henry Ford, stick around even as the world moves on and their powers fail. Mr Gates, pragmatic to the end, is leaving at the top.
In becoming the world’s richest man, Mr Gates’s unswerving self-belief has repeatedly been punctuated by that sort of pragmatism. But those qualities have never been on such public display as they were this week, when the outstanding businessman of his age stepped back from a life’s work.
As Microsoft’s non-executive chairman, Mr Gates will devote most of his efforts to his charitable foundation, where he will pit himself against malaria and poverty, rather than Google and the Department of Justice. To choose such formidable new foes in the middle of your life takes bags of self-belief, but it is also pragmatic—and a little poignant. Mr Gates has revelled in the day-to-day details of running his firm. To let it all go is to acknowledge that his best work at Microsoft is behind him. It is to accept that the innovator’s curse is to be transitory.
MS DOS and don’ts
As with many great innovations, Mr Gates’s vision has come to seem so obvious that it is hard to imagine the world any other way. Yet, early on, he grasped two things that were far from obvious at the time, and he grasped them more clearly and pursued them more fiercely than his rivals did at Commodore, MITS or even Apple.
The first was that computing could be a high-volume, low-margin business. Until Microsoft came along, the big money was in maintaining a select family of very grand mainframes. Mr Gates realised that falling hardware costs, combined with the negligible expense of making extra copies of standard software, would turn the computer business on its head. Personal computers could be “on every desk and in every home”. Profit would come from selling a lot of them cheaply, not servicing a few at a great price. And the company that won a large market share at the start would prevail later on.
Mr Gates also realised that making hardware and writing software could be stronger as separate businesses. Even as firms like Apple clung on to both the computer operating system and the hardware—just as mainframe companies had—Microsoft and Intel, which designed the PC’s microprocessors, blew computing’s business model apart. Hardware and software companies innovated in an ecosystem that the Wintel duopoly tightly controlled and—in spite of the bugs and crashes—used to reap vast economies of scale and profits. When mighty IBM unwittingly granted Microsoft the right to sell its PC operating system to other hardware firms, it did not see that it was creating legions of rivals for itself. Mr Gates did.
The technology industry likes to sneer at Microsoft as a follower. And it is true that the company has time and again bought in or imitated the technology of others. That very first PC operating system was based on someone else’s code. But Mr Gates’s invention was as a businessman. His genius was to understand what he needed and work out how to obtain it, however long it took. In an industry in which visionaries are often sniffy about anyone else’s ideas, the readiness to go elsewhere proved a devastating advantage.
And look at what happened when Mr Gates’s pragmatism failed him. Within Microsoft, they feared Bill for his relentless intellect, his grasp of detail and his brutal intolerance of anyone whom he thought “dumb”. But the legal system doesn’t do fear, and in a filmed deposition, when Microsoft was had up for being anti-competitive, the hectoring, irascible Mr Gates, rocking slightly in his chair, came across as spoilt and arrogant. It was a rare public airing of the sense of brainy entitlement that emboldened Mr Gates to get the world to yield to his will. On those rare occasions when Microsoft’s fortunes depended upon Mr Gates yielding to the world instead, the pragmatic circuit-breaker would kick in. In the antitrust case it did not, and, as this newspaper argued at the time (see article), he was lucky that it did not lead to the break-up of his company.
Inevitability and temperament are two hallmarks of Gates the innovator. The third is the transience of all pioneers. The argument was brilliantly laid out by Clayton Christensen, of Harvard Business School. The perfecting of a technology by a well managed company catering to its best customers leaves it vulnerable to “disruption” by a cheaper, scrappier alternative that is good enough for everyone else. That could be a description of Microsoft’s Office, which now does more than almost anybody could wish for—even as Google and others are offering free basic word-processors and spreadsheets online.
Mr Gates was haunted by Mr Christensen’s insight—he even asked for his help to keep back the tide. Microsoft successfully extended Windows as an operating system for servers; it has moved into new areas, such as mobile devices and video games; and it has lavished billions of dollars on all sorts of research—without much to show for it. Despite all those efforts, the PC, Mr Gates’s obsession, has ended up as an internet terminal. The company still has everything to prove online (see article). Watching Microsoft in the company of Google and Facebook is a bit like watching your dad trying to be cool.
Business is good for you
Mr Gates had the good fortune to be perfectly suited for his time—but he is less well-equipped for the collaborative and fragmented era of internet computing. This does not diminish his achievement. Nor, as some would have it, does his philanthropy necessarily magnify it. Whatever the corporate-social-responsibility gurus say, business is a force for good in itself: its most useful contribution to society is making profits and products. Philanthropy no more canonises the good businessman than it exculpates the bad. In spite of his flaws, Mr Gates is one of the good kind. Some great industrialists, like Henry Ford, stick around even as the world moves on and their powers fail. Mr Gates, pragmatic to the end, is leaving at the top.
World - The Unnoticed emergency (Bangladesh)
How Bangladesh’s generals get away with it
IN TERMS of foreign press coverage per head of population, probably no country in the world gets as raw a deal as Bangladesh. It has some 150m people. Yet if it features in the international media it tends to be either as the scene of an appalling natural disaster—flood or cyclone—or as the crucible for one of the great experiments in microcredit.
Its politics tend to be ignored. This is surprising, since it is a bastion of moderate Islam, which, like other moderate Muslim countries, such as Pakistan and Indonesia, has been prey to an extremist fringe.
India accuses it of harbouring groups plotting secession in its north-eastern states and, at times, of training terrorists who mount attacks elsewhere in India.
AFPPrisoners are transported to jail in Dhaka
Outside the subcontinent, however, few pay much attention. This is just as well for the “interim” administration, which took power in January 2007 with the backing of the army. The state of emergency it imposed then is still in force. This has allowed for some outrageous abuses.
According to Odhikar, a Bangladeshi human-rights group, 68 people died in extrajudicial killings (often called “crossfire”) in the first half of this year. Torture is endemic. The government also quietly adopted a new counter-terrorism ordinance last month, without debate. Human Rights Watch, a research and lobbying group, says it violates fundamental freedoms.
Last month, after the breakdown of talks between the government and the political parties on the election promised for December, about 28,000 political activists were detained. The country’s 68 prisons are designed to hold 27,368 people, but they were crammed with 87,579 prisoners in late June, according to the government. Some convicted prisoners are being freed prematurely to make room for these unconnected—and uncharged—political detainees.
There two main reasons why all this is so widely overlooked. The first is that when the army intervened in January 2007, most Bangladeshis were relieved (as were aid donors). The two main political parties—the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the Awami League—seemed incapable of managing an orderly transfer of power. So the voices that might draw attention to the government’s abuses have been muted.
Secondly, the previous, BNP-led, government did not like the foreign press, and made it very hard for journalists to visit. It succeeded in removing Bangladesh from the international news agenda.
A modest attempt to draw attention to Bangladesh’s predicament was staged on June 27th in the unlikely setting of the House of Lords in London. In the Moses Room, dwarfed by the huge painting of the Old Testament prophet bringing God’s laws down from the top of the mountain, Lord Avebury, a British peer, chaired a seminar on “political dialogue and the way forward to elections” in Bangladesh.
Since Britain is both the former colonial power and has around 250,000 citizens of Bangladeshi origin, it is not surprising that its parliamentarians should take an interest in the country. Indeed, it is perhaps more surprising that the seminar was sparsely attended.
One speaker, Saber Hossain Chowdhury, an Awami League leader, professed to see light at the end of the tunnel. The League is about to re-enter talks with the government. There seems a good chance that local and parliamentary elections will proceed.
It is hard, however, to see how they can be free or fair, while emergency rule in still in place. The seminar adopted a unanimous resolution calling for an immediate end to the state of emergency.
Naturally, this was not widely reported.
IN TERMS of foreign press coverage per head of population, probably no country in the world gets as raw a deal as Bangladesh. It has some 150m people. Yet if it features in the international media it tends to be either as the scene of an appalling natural disaster—flood or cyclone—or as the crucible for one of the great experiments in microcredit.
Its politics tend to be ignored. This is surprising, since it is a bastion of moderate Islam, which, like other moderate Muslim countries, such as Pakistan and Indonesia, has been prey to an extremist fringe.
India accuses it of harbouring groups plotting secession in its north-eastern states and, at times, of training terrorists who mount attacks elsewhere in India.
AFPPrisoners are transported to jail in Dhaka
Outside the subcontinent, however, few pay much attention. This is just as well for the “interim” administration, which took power in January 2007 with the backing of the army. The state of emergency it imposed then is still in force. This has allowed for some outrageous abuses.
According to Odhikar, a Bangladeshi human-rights group, 68 people died in extrajudicial killings (often called “crossfire”) in the first half of this year. Torture is endemic. The government also quietly adopted a new counter-terrorism ordinance last month, without debate. Human Rights Watch, a research and lobbying group, says it violates fundamental freedoms.
Last month, after the breakdown of talks between the government and the political parties on the election promised for December, about 28,000 political activists were detained. The country’s 68 prisons are designed to hold 27,368 people, but they were crammed with 87,579 prisoners in late June, according to the government. Some convicted prisoners are being freed prematurely to make room for these unconnected—and uncharged—political detainees.
There two main reasons why all this is so widely overlooked. The first is that when the army intervened in January 2007, most Bangladeshis were relieved (as were aid donors). The two main political parties—the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the Awami League—seemed incapable of managing an orderly transfer of power. So the voices that might draw attention to the government’s abuses have been muted.
Secondly, the previous, BNP-led, government did not like the foreign press, and made it very hard for journalists to visit. It succeeded in removing Bangladesh from the international news agenda.
A modest attempt to draw attention to Bangladesh’s predicament was staged on June 27th in the unlikely setting of the House of Lords in London. In the Moses Room, dwarfed by the huge painting of the Old Testament prophet bringing God’s laws down from the top of the mountain, Lord Avebury, a British peer, chaired a seminar on “political dialogue and the way forward to elections” in Bangladesh.
Since Britain is both the former colonial power and has around 250,000 citizens of Bangladeshi origin, it is not surprising that its parliamentarians should take an interest in the country. Indeed, it is perhaps more surprising that the seminar was sparsely attended.
One speaker, Saber Hossain Chowdhury, an Awami League leader, professed to see light at the end of the tunnel. The League is about to re-enter talks with the government. There seems a good chance that local and parliamentary elections will proceed.
It is hard, however, to see how they can be free or fair, while emergency rule in still in place. The seminar adopted a unanimous resolution calling for an immediate end to the state of emergency.
Naturally, this was not widely reported.
World - Electricity in Spain
NEXT month Spaniards’ electricity bills will go up—but not by nearly as much as they should. Electricity tariffs are regulated in Spain, and the government has kept prices artificially low. Prices have in fact fallen by 2% in nominal terms in the past ten years, and have dropped by 30% in real terms, even though the cost of generating electricity has shot up. Meanwhile, demand for electricity has soared.
Over the years, this has created a huge imbalance. Power companies have been forced to sell electricity at regulated prices that do not cover costs. The cumulative difference between what it costs them to produce power and what they are allowed to charge for it—the “tariff deficit”—has now ballooned to €14 billion ($22 billion), according to the Spanish National Energy Commission (CNE).
The industry minister, Miguel Sebastian, recognises that there is a problem. He has branded the system, which dates back to the previous administration, as “unreasonable and unfair” and says he wants to get rid of it. But he seems not to have the stomach to do so. Just to stop the deficit from getting bigger would mean raising prices by 20%, according to Unesa, the Spanish power-industry association. To repay it will mean increasing prices still further. Paying it back over the next 15 years would require price rises of nearly 35%.
That would be politically tricky at the best of times. But raising prices when Spain’s economy is deteriorating and inflation is rising is even harder. Instead, the government has proposed an average increase of just 5.6%. Some families’ bills will go up by as much as 16%, but poorer households will qualify for a cheaper “social tariff”. Admittedly, some big industrial customers will start paying market prices from July 1st, and the rest will follow next January. But that will still leave roughly 40% of consumers paying artificially low prices.
In theory, the deficit should finally stop growing on January 1st 2011, the date set by the European Union for electricity-price liberalisation in Spain. But even then the government will still have some wiggle room. It can maintain a “tariff of last resort” for some households, though who exactly will qualify for it is unclear. “The risk is that the government could broaden the definition to include households that might not qualify,” says Vicente López-Ibor, a former CNE board member.
Financing the deficit is also becoming a problem. In the past Spanish utilities could easily securitise the deficit in the debt markets and receive the money up front. But the credit crunch, and the deficit’s size, is making this harder and more expensive. Investors are reluctant to lend against increases in future electricity bills, given the government’s reluctance to raise prices.
The CNE, which is now in charge of co-ordinating the securitisation, managed to raise only half of the €2.7 billion it needed in the most recent debt auction. This means the power firms will have to wait longer to get paid, and will have to plug the gap out of their own pockets until then.
What can be done? Millions of Spanish consumers have inadvertently racked up nearly €14 billion in debt, plus interest. To stop the problem from spiralling further, the government will have to stop interfering in the price of electricity. If it also stripped out hidden costs, such as electricity taxes and renewable-energy subsidies, it would leave €2 billion-3 billion a year to cover production costs, by some estimates.
“The system needs to be made much more transparent and less interventionist,” says Pedro Mielgo, an energy consultant at Lovells, a law firm. Doing so will not be easy, but it would encourage a more efficient use of electricity.
Over the years, this has created a huge imbalance. Power companies have been forced to sell electricity at regulated prices that do not cover costs. The cumulative difference between what it costs them to produce power and what they are allowed to charge for it—the “tariff deficit”—has now ballooned to €14 billion ($22 billion), according to the Spanish National Energy Commission (CNE).
The industry minister, Miguel Sebastian, recognises that there is a problem. He has branded the system, which dates back to the previous administration, as “unreasonable and unfair” and says he wants to get rid of it. But he seems not to have the stomach to do so. Just to stop the deficit from getting bigger would mean raising prices by 20%, according to Unesa, the Spanish power-industry association. To repay it will mean increasing prices still further. Paying it back over the next 15 years would require price rises of nearly 35%.
That would be politically tricky at the best of times. But raising prices when Spain’s economy is deteriorating and inflation is rising is even harder. Instead, the government has proposed an average increase of just 5.6%. Some families’ bills will go up by as much as 16%, but poorer households will qualify for a cheaper “social tariff”. Admittedly, some big industrial customers will start paying market prices from July 1st, and the rest will follow next January. But that will still leave roughly 40% of consumers paying artificially low prices.
In theory, the deficit should finally stop growing on January 1st 2011, the date set by the European Union for electricity-price liberalisation in Spain. But even then the government will still have some wiggle room. It can maintain a “tariff of last resort” for some households, though who exactly will qualify for it is unclear. “The risk is that the government could broaden the definition to include households that might not qualify,” says Vicente López-Ibor, a former CNE board member.
Financing the deficit is also becoming a problem. In the past Spanish utilities could easily securitise the deficit in the debt markets and receive the money up front. But the credit crunch, and the deficit’s size, is making this harder and more expensive. Investors are reluctant to lend against increases in future electricity bills, given the government’s reluctance to raise prices.
The CNE, which is now in charge of co-ordinating the securitisation, managed to raise only half of the €2.7 billion it needed in the most recent debt auction. This means the power firms will have to wait longer to get paid, and will have to plug the gap out of their own pockets until then.
What can be done? Millions of Spanish consumers have inadvertently racked up nearly €14 billion in debt, plus interest. To stop the problem from spiralling further, the government will have to stop interfering in the price of electricity. If it also stripped out hidden costs, such as electricity taxes and renewable-energy subsidies, it would leave €2 billion-3 billion a year to cover production costs, by some estimates.
“The system needs to be made much more transparent and less interventionist,” says Pedro Mielgo, an energy consultant at Lovells, a law firm. Doing so will not be easy, but it would encourage a more efficient use of electricity.
World - It's later than you think
WITH oil prices at their present highs and Iraq at last making tentative progress towards stability, the last thing anyone wants to hear is that conditions in the Middle East could be about to take an abrupt turn for the worse. Unfortunately, they could. Recent weeks have brought a spike in chatter about the prospect of an Israeli military strike on Iran’s nuclear installations. Israel has conducted ostentatious long-range air exercises over the Mediterranean, and one former chief of staff has called an attack inevitable if Iran continues its nuclear work. This noise might be just a bluff designed to signal to Iran that it would be wise to stop enriching uranium, as the United Nations Security Council ordered it to a full two years ago. Then again, it might not.
Until recently, fears of an Israeli or American attack on Iran had been receding. The prospect of an American strike diminished after America’s intelligence services published their inconvenient finding last December that Iran had stopped trying to design a nuclear weapon in 2003. At the same time, diplomats have been able to point to the sort of progress diplomats point to: a series of Security Council resolutions, supported by Russia and China as well as the West, telling Iran to stop its uranium-enriching centrifuges. Sanctions have been applied as well: in the latest, the European Union decided this week to freeze the assets of Iran’s biggest bank, Bank Melli. Slowly but surely, you might conclude, the normal tools of diplomacy are being brought to bear, removing the need for anything worse. Besides, in November Americans may elect Barack Obama as president. Doesn’t he promise to sort out Iran by means of direct talks at the highest level, a necessary step that George Bush could never quite bring himself to take?
If those were your reasons for ceasing to worry, think again. Despite that American intelligence finding, neither Israel nor many other governments believe that Iran has given up its interest in nuclear weapons. Yes, the UN has passed resolutions and imposed some mild sanctions, but Iran has spent two years disregarding them, continuing to spin its centrifuges and to call for the destruction of Israel. It may well be true that Mr Bush is disinclined to bomb Iran now that he is a lame duck, but the possible advent of a President Obama might just make Israel more inclined to do so itself. As the hawkish John Bolton, a former Bush administration official, said this week, Israel may think the best time to attack would be during America’s presidential transition—too late to be accused of influencing the election and before needing a new president’s green light.
Don’t do it
Such an attack would be a mistake. Even if it did not turn the region into a “fireball”, as Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the world’s nuclear watchdog, has predicted, it would certainly provoke retaliation. Given Iran’s size and sophistication, it would at best delay rather than end whatever plans the Iranians have to become a nuclear military power. Even if Iran did get the bomb, it would probably not use it for fear of Israel’s bigger, existing stockpile. And in the (admittedly improbable) event that Iran is telling the truth when it denies having any such ambition, nothing would change its mind faster than an Israeli strike.
The trouble is, this logic looks different from Tel Aviv. Given their history, a lot of Israelis will run almost any risk to prevent a state that calls repeatedly for their own state’s destruction from acquiring the wherewithal to bring that end about. Till now, the world has talked a lot and applied some modest sanctions to stop Iran’s dash to enrich uranium. It is time to apply much tougher ones, in the hope that it is not already too late.
Until recently, fears of an Israeli or American attack on Iran had been receding. The prospect of an American strike diminished after America’s intelligence services published their inconvenient finding last December that Iran had stopped trying to design a nuclear weapon in 2003. At the same time, diplomats have been able to point to the sort of progress diplomats point to: a series of Security Council resolutions, supported by Russia and China as well as the West, telling Iran to stop its uranium-enriching centrifuges. Sanctions have been applied as well: in the latest, the European Union decided this week to freeze the assets of Iran’s biggest bank, Bank Melli. Slowly but surely, you might conclude, the normal tools of diplomacy are being brought to bear, removing the need for anything worse. Besides, in November Americans may elect Barack Obama as president. Doesn’t he promise to sort out Iran by means of direct talks at the highest level, a necessary step that George Bush could never quite bring himself to take?
If those were your reasons for ceasing to worry, think again. Despite that American intelligence finding, neither Israel nor many other governments believe that Iran has given up its interest in nuclear weapons. Yes, the UN has passed resolutions and imposed some mild sanctions, but Iran has spent two years disregarding them, continuing to spin its centrifuges and to call for the destruction of Israel. It may well be true that Mr Bush is disinclined to bomb Iran now that he is a lame duck, but the possible advent of a President Obama might just make Israel more inclined to do so itself. As the hawkish John Bolton, a former Bush administration official, said this week, Israel may think the best time to attack would be during America’s presidential transition—too late to be accused of influencing the election and before needing a new president’s green light.
Don’t do it
Such an attack would be a mistake. Even if it did not turn the region into a “fireball”, as Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the world’s nuclear watchdog, has predicted, it would certainly provoke retaliation. Given Iran’s size and sophistication, it would at best delay rather than end whatever plans the Iranians have to become a nuclear military power. Even if Iran did get the bomb, it would probably not use it for fear of Israel’s bigger, existing stockpile. And in the (admittedly improbable) event that Iran is telling the truth when it denies having any such ambition, nothing would change its mind faster than an Israeli strike.
The trouble is, this logic looks different from Tel Aviv. Given their history, a lot of Israelis will run almost any risk to prevent a state that calls repeatedly for their own state’s destruction from acquiring the wherewithal to bring that end about. Till now, the world has talked a lot and applied some modest sanctions to stop Iran’s dash to enrich uranium. It is time to apply much tougher ones, in the hope that it is not already too late.
World - Doing good by doing very nicely indeed
FOR years Muhammad Yunus reigned as the public face of microfinance. It seemed only right when, in 2006, the Bangladeshi economist cum social entrepreneur and his Grameen Bank shared the Nobel peace prize for a micro-lending revolution that has helped millions to earn their own way out of poverty. Yet for the past year or so, microfinance has had another public face, one that troubles people like Mr Yunus. CompartamosBanco argues that the best way for microfinance to help the poor is for it to make a socking great profit.
Since Compartamos listed its shares for over $1 billion in April 2007, it has stirred up an increasingly fierce debate. To Mr Yunus and its other critics, the Mexican bank is no better than an old-fashioned loan shark, earning its huge profits by charging poor borrowers a usurious interest rate of at least 79% a year. Perhaps sensing opinion turning against it, the bank has belatedly sprung to its own defence, issuing a defiant justification of its business in an 11-page “letter to our peers”. And it manages to make a convincing case for its strategy of fighting poverty with profits.
Shares and sharing out
Compartamos was born out of the same social concern that inspired Mr Yunus. It uses a similar group-lending model to Grameen’s. It says its mission has not changed, but it has become convinced that by pursuing profits it will be able to provide financial services to many more poor people far more quickly than it would if it had continued to act as a charity.
Microfinance, especially lending to microentrepreneurs with no collateral, is labour-intensive and costly—in Compartamos’s case, around $152 a year per client, with an average loan of $450. By charging an interest rate that generates a profit, the bank can grow fast and provide many more “micro-entrepreneurs” with the finance they need, even at interest rates that by the standards of rich countries seem unacceptably high. The bank now has over 900,000 clients, and expects to reach over 1m this year, up from the 61,000 it had in 2000, after a decade as a traditional non-profit outfit. None of these new borrowers was compelled to come to its doors.
Compartamos also argues that its profits will build a microfinance industry. The more it earns, the more attractive microfinance will seem to investors, and the more capital will flow in. And the evidence supports this apparently self-serving claim: since Compartamos started to pursue profit, seven new regulated microfinance providers have begun to compete with it in Mexico, many of them financed by profit-seeking capitalists. Greater scale and competition are driving down interest rates—in Compartamos’s case, from 115% seven years ago. Even Mr Yunus has recently started to make the case for a more self-sustaining “social business” model, though his “non-loss, non-dividend company” is hardly as hungry as Compartamos.
Profiting from the poor can be wrong, when lending is predatory—when the lender expects that the borrower will be unable to pay the interest or repay the principal. Compartamos does not target the poorest of the poor: it argues they would be better served by benefits such as income support from the state. It reports low default rates and high customer satisfaction. As for exploiting the ignorance of some borrowers, Compartamos says it is committed to transparency on interest rates and other charges. Since going public, it has offered financial literacy courses—some 60,000 of its clients went on one last year. If only those rich-country banks which touted subprime mortgages to the poor had been as public-spirited.
Since Compartamos listed its shares for over $1 billion in April 2007, it has stirred up an increasingly fierce debate. To Mr Yunus and its other critics, the Mexican bank is no better than an old-fashioned loan shark, earning its huge profits by charging poor borrowers a usurious interest rate of at least 79% a year. Perhaps sensing opinion turning against it, the bank has belatedly sprung to its own defence, issuing a defiant justification of its business in an 11-page “letter to our peers”. And it manages to make a convincing case for its strategy of fighting poverty with profits.
Shares and sharing out
Compartamos was born out of the same social concern that inspired Mr Yunus. It uses a similar group-lending model to Grameen’s. It says its mission has not changed, but it has become convinced that by pursuing profits it will be able to provide financial services to many more poor people far more quickly than it would if it had continued to act as a charity.
Microfinance, especially lending to microentrepreneurs with no collateral, is labour-intensive and costly—in Compartamos’s case, around $152 a year per client, with an average loan of $450. By charging an interest rate that generates a profit, the bank can grow fast and provide many more “micro-entrepreneurs” with the finance they need, even at interest rates that by the standards of rich countries seem unacceptably high. The bank now has over 900,000 clients, and expects to reach over 1m this year, up from the 61,000 it had in 2000, after a decade as a traditional non-profit outfit. None of these new borrowers was compelled to come to its doors.
Compartamos also argues that its profits will build a microfinance industry. The more it earns, the more attractive microfinance will seem to investors, and the more capital will flow in. And the evidence supports this apparently self-serving claim: since Compartamos started to pursue profit, seven new regulated microfinance providers have begun to compete with it in Mexico, many of them financed by profit-seeking capitalists. Greater scale and competition are driving down interest rates—in Compartamos’s case, from 115% seven years ago. Even Mr Yunus has recently started to make the case for a more self-sustaining “social business” model, though his “non-loss, non-dividend company” is hardly as hungry as Compartamos.
Profiting from the poor can be wrong, when lending is predatory—when the lender expects that the borrower will be unable to pay the interest or repay the principal. Compartamos does not target the poorest of the poor: it argues they would be better served by benefits such as income support from the state. It reports low default rates and high customer satisfaction. As for exploiting the ignorance of some borrowers, Compartamos says it is committed to transparency on interest rates and other charges. Since going public, it has offered financial literacy courses—some 60,000 of its clients went on one last year. If only those rich-country banks which touted subprime mortgages to the poor had been as public-spirited.
Business - Lotte Ambition
A South Korean retailer plans a bold move into China
WOMEN in South Korea have a reputation for being some of the world’s most demanding shoppers. Keen bargain hunters, they have an eye for quality and if something falls short of their expectations they are not shy of venting their anger. They photograph shops or goods that fail to make the grade, and post pictures online with detailed and withering criticism; the offender may then be shunned by other buyers. So exacting are the demands of Korean customers that Western firms often solicit their opinions of new products before launching them. If you can please a Korean customer, the feeling goes, you can please anyone.
Accordingly, South Korean department stores provide some of the best service in the world. With a smile and a bow, sales assistants scurry after customers, attending to their whims while calming their tearful children. Lotte, South Korea’s biggest department-store chain, thinks its experience at home makes it ideally suited to serving the new rich in other fast-developing economies. In July it plans to open a huge department store in China, in the Wangfujing shopping district in Beijing. It has set an annual sales target for the store of $150m. The wealthiest customers will be granted special parking spots and will be guided around the store by personal attendants. (Appealing to the very rich works well for Lotte at home: its richest 1% of customers accounted for 17% of its $5.8 billion in sales last year.)
Lotte’s Beijing store will be a test of the company’s plans to launch nine more stores in other big Chinese cities. It has asked consultants to analyse the Chinese market and help it choose a combination of foreign and local brands to appeal to Chinese shoppers. Lotte plans to sell South Korean cosmetics and clothes, banking on the appeal of Korean pop culture, which is popular throughout Asia. Lotte’s Beijing staff have been sent to Seoul to learn about its procedures, marketing and service.
But Lotte’s experience in Russia, where it opened its first foreign store last September, suggests that expanding abroad may prove harder than it thinks. It has had to spend a lot on advertising, has found it difficult to attract experienced staff for its Moscow store, and has cut its annual sales target from $140m to $120m. It hopes China will not prove such a tough nut to crack, since the cultural differences with South Korea will be less pronounced. “Many retailers find China tough,” says Yi Il-min, Lotte’s director of international business development. “We’re quite comfortable.”
WOMEN in South Korea have a reputation for being some of the world’s most demanding shoppers. Keen bargain hunters, they have an eye for quality and if something falls short of their expectations they are not shy of venting their anger. They photograph shops or goods that fail to make the grade, and post pictures online with detailed and withering criticism; the offender may then be shunned by other buyers. So exacting are the demands of Korean customers that Western firms often solicit their opinions of new products before launching them. If you can please a Korean customer, the feeling goes, you can please anyone.
Accordingly, South Korean department stores provide some of the best service in the world. With a smile and a bow, sales assistants scurry after customers, attending to their whims while calming their tearful children. Lotte, South Korea’s biggest department-store chain, thinks its experience at home makes it ideally suited to serving the new rich in other fast-developing economies. In July it plans to open a huge department store in China, in the Wangfujing shopping district in Beijing. It has set an annual sales target for the store of $150m. The wealthiest customers will be granted special parking spots and will be guided around the store by personal attendants. (Appealing to the very rich works well for Lotte at home: its richest 1% of customers accounted for 17% of its $5.8 billion in sales last year.)
Lotte’s Beijing store will be a test of the company’s plans to launch nine more stores in other big Chinese cities. It has asked consultants to analyse the Chinese market and help it choose a combination of foreign and local brands to appeal to Chinese shoppers. Lotte plans to sell South Korean cosmetics and clothes, banking on the appeal of Korean pop culture, which is popular throughout Asia. Lotte’s Beijing staff have been sent to Seoul to learn about its procedures, marketing and service.
But Lotte’s experience in Russia, where it opened its first foreign store last September, suggests that expanding abroad may prove harder than it thinks. It has had to spend a lot on advertising, has found it difficult to attract experienced staff for its Moscow store, and has cut its annual sales target from $140m to $120m. It hopes China will not prove such a tough nut to crack, since the cultural differences with South Korea will be less pronounced. “Many retailers find China tough,” says Yi Il-min, Lotte’s director of international business development. “We’re quite comfortable.”
Business - After Bill
“DOES Microsoft still have a big, hairy audacious goal?” Not everybody would presume to ask Bill Gates a question like that. But Mr Gates was this week due to remove himself from the firm’s day-to-day business, to become its non-executive chairman, and Tim O’Reilly, a noted internet guru, felt emboldened to commit lèse majesté. Putting “a computer on every desk and in every home” had been the original mission of Microsoft, which Mr Gates founded more than 30 years ago. But now the job is pretty much done, at least in the West, and Microsoft is the world’s largest software company. What is its mission now, Mr O’Reilly recently asked at a technological shindig, called “All Things Digital”—other than just to sell as much software as it can?
Mr Gates (pictured with Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s chief research and strategy officer, left, and Ray Ozzie, chief software architect, right) is leaving Microsoft for the charitable foundation he set up with his wife, Melinda, even as his firm is in some disorder. Windows, Microsoft’s all-conquering operating system, has become so complex, some say, that it is collapsing under its own weight. Its latest version, Vista, is not a complete flop, but it is a huge disappointment. Many users prefer the previous one, XP, and Microsoft is already hyping the next, Windows 7. Microsoft is also struggling to keep up with Google, its main rival. It recently announced a product that pays consumers money if they buy something through an advertisement next to its search results—a gambit that smacks of desperation. And the firm’s aborted bid for Yahoo!, an online giant, has done nothing to reassure investors. As a result, Microsoft’s shares continue to do worse than the industry average. Some observers have started to wonder whether Microsoft should not break itself up—for instance into a legacy business, containing Windows and Office, a service unit, and games, where the company has recently been most innovative.
Mr Gates’s reply to Mr O’Reilly was not entirely reassuring. The firm, he said, now has dozens of “quests”—revolutionising television, automating data centres and creating software ten times faster. Perhaps this fragmentation of Microsoft’s ambition is only natural. In its 33 hectic years the company has swollen to nearly 90,000 employees (see charts); revenues this year should exceed $60 billion and net income reach almost $18 billion. Even Microsoft’s own senior executives struggle to grasp its growing empire. The firm now sells 75 different products, many of them in lots of versions.
In fact Mr Gates could easily have given a more pointed answer. Of all that Microsoft hopes to achieve in the post-Gates era, one goal dominates all others—even catching Google. That is to become the dominant force in the forthcoming era of cloud computing—or, to refresh Microsoft’s original mission: “to supply services to every desk, to every home and to every hand”. That ought to be big and hairy enough to satisfy even Mr O’Reilly.
To understand what that means, and the difficulties it poses Microsoft, start with the idea that computing is undergoing one of its great periodic shifts. In its early days, most computing took place on mainframes. Ever-falling costs led computing to shatter—first into minicomputers, then into personal computers (PCs) and, more recently, hand-held devices. Now communications is catching up with hardware and software and, thanks to cheap broadband and wireless access, the industry is witnessing a pull back to the middle. This is leading much computing to migrate back into huge data centres. Networks of these computing plants form “computing clouds”—vast, amorphous, delocalised nebulae of processing power and storage.
Service with a simile
Marc Benioff, a cloud-computing pioneer and the boss of Salesforce.com, which helps firms manage their customers on the web thinks this will spell the “death of software”. Rather than being a big chunk of code sitting on a hard disk on your desk, software will come “as a service” over the internet through a browser. This idea is also espoused by Google. Although the online giant is best known as the world’s biggest online search and advertising firm, it now also offers many other services—plenty of which compete with Microsoft’s PC programs.
Not so fast, says Mr Ozzie. He has been Microsoft’s chief software architect since 2006 and will steer its technology after Mr Gates goes, while Mr Mundie will take over as the company’s long-term thinker and public face. “Whenever these things happen, people think that it is going to be a complete extreme shift,” Mr Ozzie says. “But in reality customers are very pragmatic and figure out the right mix of old and new stuff.” This mix, he argues, will depend on where people are, which device they use and what they want to do. Instead of the death of software, Mr Ozzie speaks of “software plus services”—the title of Microsoft’s new strategy.
He thinks of cloud computing differently. Fewer people will put the PC at the centre of their computing universe; it will be one of many devices connected through the web, which Mr Ozzie calls the “hub”. But what sounds like bad news for a firm making PC software is in fact a huge opportunity, he says—because this new set-up sits well with Microsoft’s DNA. The heart of its business has always contained a simple, powerful idea: find a market that is global in scale—one that is split between lots of vendors and so dysfunctional; then integrate the various parts into a “platform” and develop its chief applications; and finally, build an “ecosystem” of developers writing programs for it.
This has been Microsoft’s approach to its largest products—with Windows as the most successful. Versions of this operating system run on over 90% of the 1 billion PCs in use, because Microsoft has excelled at building an ecosystem around its platform, in particular by giving developers the tools for their job. This supercharged what economists call “network effects”: the more applications run on Windows, the more attractive it becomes for users; that, in turn, attracts more developers, and so it goes on. Although Mr Ozzie hesitates to put it in such terms, his goal is to create a kind of Windows in the cloud. “If you were to build an operating system today,” he explains, “it would not be a single piece of software that operates a single computer.”
He is first tackling device integration. In a recent internal memo, which Microsoft made public, Mr Ozzie talks of “a personal mesh of devices—a means by which all of your devices are brought together, managed through the web as a seamless whole.” This mesh will make sure, for instance, that devices automatically synchronise important files, such as an address book, and that one device can control the others. Windows has other similarities with the platform Microsoft wants to build in the cloud. The firm plans to provide developers with tools to weave services together into new offerings. And it will give them ready-made routines, such as checking a user’s identity, tracking his location and processing payments.
The club in the cloud
As with all big ideas emanating from Redmond, Mr Ozzie’s vision has provoked strong reactions. Here we go again, says one side, who think they have spotted a monopolist’s latest plan for world domination. Welcome to the club, comes the retort from the other. Google, Facebook, Salesforce.com and others are already building similar platforms—Microsoft is just a Johnny-come-lately hedging its bets.
Needless to say, things are a bit more complicated. Mr Ozzie’s plans amount to more than a dominant software company trying to protect its franchise. Building a platform for the cloud does not seem such a bad idea, since it is precisely what many in the industry are trying to do. Yet the cloud will be based more on open standards than on proprietary technology. It is too big and too diverse to be dominated by one provider. And governments would be unlikely to allow one firm to control such an important infrastructure.
As Mr Ozzie rightly points out, it is the very essence of the shift towards services, that computing now allows for applications and data to sit where it is technically most appropriate—or, just as important, where users prefer. And people are not about to throw out their powerful PCs or other “client” devices anytime soon, not least because they will sometimes be offline. Even Google is now offering software that allows its applications to be used off the internet.
The problem is that, so far, Microsoft does not have much to show for its plans, says Brent Thill, director of software research at Citi Investment Research. Take Windows Live, a collection of online services that in 2006 Mr Ozzie called the “hub to bring it all together”. Many of Windows Live’s services are derivative and few have a lot of users. Recently, Microsoft said that it will shut down some services, including Windows Live Expo, a listing service for classified advertisements.
Worse, Microsoft has not got much to show for its huge investments in online search, the killer application in Google’s cloud. The firm’s market share in search is only 8.5% in America, compared with Google’s share of more than 60%. As a result, Microsoft’s online-advertisement platform has not succeeded either. That matters, because even if companies pay for their cloud services, most consumer services will be funded by advertising. This explains why Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s boss, was prepared to pay $47.5 billion for Yahoo! The online giant would have been an “accelerator” in its quest to catch up with Google in search and advertising.
But those setbacks should not obscure that Microsoft has a plan—and is willing to put a lot of money behind it. It is spending billions to build a network of data centres, a huge infrastructure to cope with the expected demand for all its software-plus-services business. The company does not disclose how many computers now populate its server farms. It says only that it is adding 10,000 servers a month, which is roughly the total number used by a company like Facebook.
What is more, Microsoft has already spent the past couple of years writing software for its new platform. In April Mr Ozzie presented a first chunk, called “Live Mesh”—in his words, the “connective tissue that brings together devices in the cloud.” It will enable users to synchronise files on lots of computers as well as to a web desktop in the cloud, for instance. More will come in the autumn, when Microsoft is likely to publish some new tools for developers.
Microsoft is further along with its new services than most think. Health Vault, launched in October, is not just a place where people can store their medical details online, but a service that can connect to all sorts of monitoring devices, as well as software used by hospitals and doctors. Microsoft is likely to come up with combinations of consumer and institutional data in other areas, such as education. It hopes they will become the killer aps of the new platform, rather as Word and Excel were for Windows.
Microsoft’s familiar products are also being recast for the cloud. Sometimes the change is modest. The latest versions of Office, the software package that includes Word and Excel, enable users to share files and collaborate. Mr Ozzie argues there is no demand for a fully featured web-based version, (though, it has to be said, the old desktop-bound Office is one of Microsoft’s biggest money-makers and one of the main reasons for people to use Windows). Other overhauls are more ambitious. Customers will soon have the choice of running Microsoft’s business programs, such as its mail-server software, Exchange, on their own computers or in the cloud. Chris Capossela, who oversees this shift at Microsoft, expects half of the mailboxes managed by Exchange to be online.
This flurry of activity in Redmond does not guarantee Microsoft success in the cloud. Top of the list of Redmond watchers’ worries is the firm’s culture and management. Mary Jo Foley, a long-time Microsoft correspondent, thinks it will lose something vital when Mr Gates walks out of the door. She concludes in her recently published book “Microsoft 2.0” that if “Microsoft were still the company it was ten or 20 years ago, with the simultaneously ruthless and cautious Gates at the helm,” she would have “no qualms” about predicting its success.
The firm has become bloated, insiders say. “It’s a huge problem. Microsoft has so much raw potential, but it needs extreme leadership to break out of the bureaucratic morass it encumbered itself with,” says the book’s foreword, written by “Mini-Microsoft”, an anonymous blogger-cum-employee who is required reading for Microsoft watchers.
If Microsoft has made one excellent hire in recent years, it is Mr Ozzie. Although he is unlikely to become a public figure in the mould of Mr Gates, he is more in tune with a style of computing in which everything is connected. He understands that a take-no-prisoners attitude will get you only so far. Mr Ozzie is also level-headed, hands-on and a brilliant technologist. He himself wrote much of Lotus Notes, an early collaborative program, and came to Microsoft when it bought his latest start-up, Groove Networks, in 2005.
Yet some think Microsoft needs more fresh blood in its upper echelons. Although some veterans have recently left and some new executives have been hired, many senior positions are still filled by people who have been with the company for more than a decade, says Michael Cusumano, a professor at the MIT’s Sloan School of Management and the author of a book on the inner workings of Microsoft. Can a veteran leadership team, he asks, foresee how the software business will change? And can it attract a new generation of employees to the company?
Microsoft is no longer the chosen workplace for many young geeks. Second-generation internet firms, such as Google and Facebook, have more “mind share”. The same is true for investors and users, which is partly why Microsoft will launch a $300m rebranding campaign later this year. To make Microsoft hip again, the firm has hired one of America’s coolest advertising agencies, Crispin Porter+Boguski.
Microsoft’s image is still tarnished by the antitrust saga of a decade ago, when it was judged to have abused its Windows monopoly. That would prove a more serious stain if it stops consumers from trusting the firm with their personal data, a necessary part of many cloud services. After similar antitrust woes, IBM took decades to shed its reputation for being overbearing and arrogant. It managed partly by becoming a champion of industry standards and open-source software.
Microsoft is treading a similar path. The firm has already changed—whether the American and the European antitrust actions have tamed it, or customers want different behaviour, or Microsoft has just grown up. It has become more open—it no longer wants to lock the world into its own proprietary technology. “We have matured a lot,” says Mr Mundie, who spearheaded this opening-up.
Microsoft has indeed done many things that would not have seemed possible a few years ago. It has embraced industry standards, published “interoperability principles” that guide its developers, and released thousands of pages describing how its programs work together, so that rival products can join in. To boot, Microsoft has accepted that open-source software is here to stay. It has adopted some of the techniques of volunteer developers, given them code and even put some open-source code in its programs.
Still, many do not believe in the new Microsoft. When Information Week, an American computing magazine, surveyed some 500 technology professionals, more than half said they thought that Microsoft’s openness was mostly a publicity campaign. In a recent speech that was widely interpreted as taking a swipe at Microsoft, Neelie Kroes, the European Union’s competition commissioner, said that governments and businesses would do well to use software based on open standards. And Matt Asay, a blogger and executive of Alfresco, an open-source software company, speaks for many in the open-source movement when he says that Microsoft “is the only major software company other than SAP that has not fully engaged with the open-source community.”
Microsoft’s approach to open source hints that the firm has not yet made up its mind what it wants to be. Even as the company seemed to have made peace with the other camp, signing licensing deals with open-source companies, it accused open-source software fans of violating 235 of its patents and threatened legal action.
The defining test of Microsoft’s openness will be whether it tries to use its monopoly on the desktop to gain an unfair advantage in the cloud by tightly integrating—or “bundling”—software and services. Critics say the firm has already tried to favour its online search service in its Windows Vista operating system, but backed off when Google complained. Mr Mundie, however, is eager to offer reassurance: although Microsoft will make its software and services work well together, it will do nothing unlawful, he says: “The company has been quite clear how we are thinking about interoperability.”
Microsoft is in transition. “The Road Ahead” will not be as straight or as smooth as it was on the cover of Mr Gates’s bestseller, written in 1995. Yet Microsoft is unlikely to hit a wall, as IBM did after Mr Gates steered his own big shift in computing all those years ago—if only because Microsoft has a clearer view of the future. And if the worst happens, watch out for Mr Gates returning to put his creation back in the fast lane.
Mr Gates (pictured with Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s chief research and strategy officer, left, and Ray Ozzie, chief software architect, right) is leaving Microsoft for the charitable foundation he set up with his wife, Melinda, even as his firm is in some disorder. Windows, Microsoft’s all-conquering operating system, has become so complex, some say, that it is collapsing under its own weight. Its latest version, Vista, is not a complete flop, but it is a huge disappointment. Many users prefer the previous one, XP, and Microsoft is already hyping the next, Windows 7. Microsoft is also struggling to keep up with Google, its main rival. It recently announced a product that pays consumers money if they buy something through an advertisement next to its search results—a gambit that smacks of desperation. And the firm’s aborted bid for Yahoo!, an online giant, has done nothing to reassure investors. As a result, Microsoft’s shares continue to do worse than the industry average. Some observers have started to wonder whether Microsoft should not break itself up—for instance into a legacy business, containing Windows and Office, a service unit, and games, where the company has recently been most innovative.
Mr Gates’s reply to Mr O’Reilly was not entirely reassuring. The firm, he said, now has dozens of “quests”—revolutionising television, automating data centres and creating software ten times faster. Perhaps this fragmentation of Microsoft’s ambition is only natural. In its 33 hectic years the company has swollen to nearly 90,000 employees (see charts); revenues this year should exceed $60 billion and net income reach almost $18 billion. Even Microsoft’s own senior executives struggle to grasp its growing empire. The firm now sells 75 different products, many of them in lots of versions.
In fact Mr Gates could easily have given a more pointed answer. Of all that Microsoft hopes to achieve in the post-Gates era, one goal dominates all others—even catching Google. That is to become the dominant force in the forthcoming era of cloud computing—or, to refresh Microsoft’s original mission: “to supply services to every desk, to every home and to every hand”. That ought to be big and hairy enough to satisfy even Mr O’Reilly.
To understand what that means, and the difficulties it poses Microsoft, start with the idea that computing is undergoing one of its great periodic shifts. In its early days, most computing took place on mainframes. Ever-falling costs led computing to shatter—first into minicomputers, then into personal computers (PCs) and, more recently, hand-held devices. Now communications is catching up with hardware and software and, thanks to cheap broadband and wireless access, the industry is witnessing a pull back to the middle. This is leading much computing to migrate back into huge data centres. Networks of these computing plants form “computing clouds”—vast, amorphous, delocalised nebulae of processing power and storage.
Service with a simile
Marc Benioff, a cloud-computing pioneer and the boss of Salesforce.com, which helps firms manage their customers on the web thinks this will spell the “death of software”. Rather than being a big chunk of code sitting on a hard disk on your desk, software will come “as a service” over the internet through a browser. This idea is also espoused by Google. Although the online giant is best known as the world’s biggest online search and advertising firm, it now also offers many other services—plenty of which compete with Microsoft’s PC programs.
Not so fast, says Mr Ozzie. He has been Microsoft’s chief software architect since 2006 and will steer its technology after Mr Gates goes, while Mr Mundie will take over as the company’s long-term thinker and public face. “Whenever these things happen, people think that it is going to be a complete extreme shift,” Mr Ozzie says. “But in reality customers are very pragmatic and figure out the right mix of old and new stuff.” This mix, he argues, will depend on where people are, which device they use and what they want to do. Instead of the death of software, Mr Ozzie speaks of “software plus services”—the title of Microsoft’s new strategy.
He thinks of cloud computing differently. Fewer people will put the PC at the centre of their computing universe; it will be one of many devices connected through the web, which Mr Ozzie calls the “hub”. But what sounds like bad news for a firm making PC software is in fact a huge opportunity, he says—because this new set-up sits well with Microsoft’s DNA. The heart of its business has always contained a simple, powerful idea: find a market that is global in scale—one that is split between lots of vendors and so dysfunctional; then integrate the various parts into a “platform” and develop its chief applications; and finally, build an “ecosystem” of developers writing programs for it.
This has been Microsoft’s approach to its largest products—with Windows as the most successful. Versions of this operating system run on over 90% of the 1 billion PCs in use, because Microsoft has excelled at building an ecosystem around its platform, in particular by giving developers the tools for their job. This supercharged what economists call “network effects”: the more applications run on Windows, the more attractive it becomes for users; that, in turn, attracts more developers, and so it goes on. Although Mr Ozzie hesitates to put it in such terms, his goal is to create a kind of Windows in the cloud. “If you were to build an operating system today,” he explains, “it would not be a single piece of software that operates a single computer.”
He is first tackling device integration. In a recent internal memo, which Microsoft made public, Mr Ozzie talks of “a personal mesh of devices—a means by which all of your devices are brought together, managed through the web as a seamless whole.” This mesh will make sure, for instance, that devices automatically synchronise important files, such as an address book, and that one device can control the others. Windows has other similarities with the platform Microsoft wants to build in the cloud. The firm plans to provide developers with tools to weave services together into new offerings. And it will give them ready-made routines, such as checking a user’s identity, tracking his location and processing payments.
The club in the cloud
As with all big ideas emanating from Redmond, Mr Ozzie’s vision has provoked strong reactions. Here we go again, says one side, who think they have spotted a monopolist’s latest plan for world domination. Welcome to the club, comes the retort from the other. Google, Facebook, Salesforce.com and others are already building similar platforms—Microsoft is just a Johnny-come-lately hedging its bets.
Needless to say, things are a bit more complicated. Mr Ozzie’s plans amount to more than a dominant software company trying to protect its franchise. Building a platform for the cloud does not seem such a bad idea, since it is precisely what many in the industry are trying to do. Yet the cloud will be based more on open standards than on proprietary technology. It is too big and too diverse to be dominated by one provider. And governments would be unlikely to allow one firm to control such an important infrastructure.
As Mr Ozzie rightly points out, it is the very essence of the shift towards services, that computing now allows for applications and data to sit where it is technically most appropriate—or, just as important, where users prefer. And people are not about to throw out their powerful PCs or other “client” devices anytime soon, not least because they will sometimes be offline. Even Google is now offering software that allows its applications to be used off the internet.
The problem is that, so far, Microsoft does not have much to show for its plans, says Brent Thill, director of software research at Citi Investment Research. Take Windows Live, a collection of online services that in 2006 Mr Ozzie called the “hub to bring it all together”. Many of Windows Live’s services are derivative and few have a lot of users. Recently, Microsoft said that it will shut down some services, including Windows Live Expo, a listing service for classified advertisements.
Worse, Microsoft has not got much to show for its huge investments in online search, the killer application in Google’s cloud. The firm’s market share in search is only 8.5% in America, compared with Google’s share of more than 60%. As a result, Microsoft’s online-advertisement platform has not succeeded either. That matters, because even if companies pay for their cloud services, most consumer services will be funded by advertising. This explains why Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s boss, was prepared to pay $47.5 billion for Yahoo! The online giant would have been an “accelerator” in its quest to catch up with Google in search and advertising.
But those setbacks should not obscure that Microsoft has a plan—and is willing to put a lot of money behind it. It is spending billions to build a network of data centres, a huge infrastructure to cope with the expected demand for all its software-plus-services business. The company does not disclose how many computers now populate its server farms. It says only that it is adding 10,000 servers a month, which is roughly the total number used by a company like Facebook.
What is more, Microsoft has already spent the past couple of years writing software for its new platform. In April Mr Ozzie presented a first chunk, called “Live Mesh”—in his words, the “connective tissue that brings together devices in the cloud.” It will enable users to synchronise files on lots of computers as well as to a web desktop in the cloud, for instance. More will come in the autumn, when Microsoft is likely to publish some new tools for developers.
Microsoft is further along with its new services than most think. Health Vault, launched in October, is not just a place where people can store their medical details online, but a service that can connect to all sorts of monitoring devices, as well as software used by hospitals and doctors. Microsoft is likely to come up with combinations of consumer and institutional data in other areas, such as education. It hopes they will become the killer aps of the new platform, rather as Word and Excel were for Windows.
Microsoft’s familiar products are also being recast for the cloud. Sometimes the change is modest. The latest versions of Office, the software package that includes Word and Excel, enable users to share files and collaborate. Mr Ozzie argues there is no demand for a fully featured web-based version, (though, it has to be said, the old desktop-bound Office is one of Microsoft’s biggest money-makers and one of the main reasons for people to use Windows). Other overhauls are more ambitious. Customers will soon have the choice of running Microsoft’s business programs, such as its mail-server software, Exchange, on their own computers or in the cloud. Chris Capossela, who oversees this shift at Microsoft, expects half of the mailboxes managed by Exchange to be online.
This flurry of activity in Redmond does not guarantee Microsoft success in the cloud. Top of the list of Redmond watchers’ worries is the firm’s culture and management. Mary Jo Foley, a long-time Microsoft correspondent, thinks it will lose something vital when Mr Gates walks out of the door. She concludes in her recently published book “Microsoft 2.0” that if “Microsoft were still the company it was ten or 20 years ago, with the simultaneously ruthless and cautious Gates at the helm,” she would have “no qualms” about predicting its success.
The firm has become bloated, insiders say. “It’s a huge problem. Microsoft has so much raw potential, but it needs extreme leadership to break out of the bureaucratic morass it encumbered itself with,” says the book’s foreword, written by “Mini-Microsoft”, an anonymous blogger-cum-employee who is required reading for Microsoft watchers.
If Microsoft has made one excellent hire in recent years, it is Mr Ozzie. Although he is unlikely to become a public figure in the mould of Mr Gates, he is more in tune with a style of computing in which everything is connected. He understands that a take-no-prisoners attitude will get you only so far. Mr Ozzie is also level-headed, hands-on and a brilliant technologist. He himself wrote much of Lotus Notes, an early collaborative program, and came to Microsoft when it bought his latest start-up, Groove Networks, in 2005.
Yet some think Microsoft needs more fresh blood in its upper echelons. Although some veterans have recently left and some new executives have been hired, many senior positions are still filled by people who have been with the company for more than a decade, says Michael Cusumano, a professor at the MIT’s Sloan School of Management and the author of a book on the inner workings of Microsoft. Can a veteran leadership team, he asks, foresee how the software business will change? And can it attract a new generation of employees to the company?
Microsoft is no longer the chosen workplace for many young geeks. Second-generation internet firms, such as Google and Facebook, have more “mind share”. The same is true for investors and users, which is partly why Microsoft will launch a $300m rebranding campaign later this year. To make Microsoft hip again, the firm has hired one of America’s coolest advertising agencies, Crispin Porter+Boguski.
Microsoft’s image is still tarnished by the antitrust saga of a decade ago, when it was judged to have abused its Windows monopoly. That would prove a more serious stain if it stops consumers from trusting the firm with their personal data, a necessary part of many cloud services. After similar antitrust woes, IBM took decades to shed its reputation for being overbearing and arrogant. It managed partly by becoming a champion of industry standards and open-source software.
Microsoft is treading a similar path. The firm has already changed—whether the American and the European antitrust actions have tamed it, or customers want different behaviour, or Microsoft has just grown up. It has become more open—it no longer wants to lock the world into its own proprietary technology. “We have matured a lot,” says Mr Mundie, who spearheaded this opening-up.
Microsoft has indeed done many things that would not have seemed possible a few years ago. It has embraced industry standards, published “interoperability principles” that guide its developers, and released thousands of pages describing how its programs work together, so that rival products can join in. To boot, Microsoft has accepted that open-source software is here to stay. It has adopted some of the techniques of volunteer developers, given them code and even put some open-source code in its programs.
Still, many do not believe in the new Microsoft. When Information Week, an American computing magazine, surveyed some 500 technology professionals, more than half said they thought that Microsoft’s openness was mostly a publicity campaign. In a recent speech that was widely interpreted as taking a swipe at Microsoft, Neelie Kroes, the European Union’s competition commissioner, said that governments and businesses would do well to use software based on open standards. And Matt Asay, a blogger and executive of Alfresco, an open-source software company, speaks for many in the open-source movement when he says that Microsoft “is the only major software company other than SAP that has not fully engaged with the open-source community.”
Microsoft’s approach to open source hints that the firm has not yet made up its mind what it wants to be. Even as the company seemed to have made peace with the other camp, signing licensing deals with open-source companies, it accused open-source software fans of violating 235 of its patents and threatened legal action.
The defining test of Microsoft’s openness will be whether it tries to use its monopoly on the desktop to gain an unfair advantage in the cloud by tightly integrating—or “bundling”—software and services. Critics say the firm has already tried to favour its online search service in its Windows Vista operating system, but backed off when Google complained. Mr Mundie, however, is eager to offer reassurance: although Microsoft will make its software and services work well together, it will do nothing unlawful, he says: “The company has been quite clear how we are thinking about interoperability.”
Microsoft is in transition. “The Road Ahead” will not be as straight or as smooth as it was on the cover of Mr Gates’s bestseller, written in 1995. Yet Microsoft is unlikely to hit a wall, as IBM did after Mr Gates steered his own big shift in computing all those years ago—if only because Microsoft has a clearer view of the future. And if the worst happens, watch out for Mr Gates returning to put his creation back in the fast lane.
World - Crying into their beer
Locals fear more job losses
MISSOURI’S politicians, from the lowliest alderman to the governor himself, are up in arms. Its Republican senator, Kit Bond, and its Democratic one, Claire McCaskill, have put aside differences and are asking the Justice Department to step in. The governor of Missouri, Matt Blunt, has ordered state agencies to do all they can to block the dreadful move. The cause is InBev of Belgium’s $46 billion bid for Anheuser-Busch. Busch brews Budweiser, probably America’s most famous beer and the world’s bestselling one. The company, though not the largest employer in St Louis, has its headquarters there and is a huge part of the city’s identity.
Patriotic beer-lovers have mounted a campaign to keep Budweiser in American hands. Websites appeared overnight once news of the bid broke and have so far collected around 70,000 signatures on electronic petitions. Yard signs and bumper stickers have sprouted, and on June 14th protesters marched to Busch stadium, one of the many fruits of Anheuser-Busch’s 150 years in St Louis.
Despite the local jokes about pouring Bud on Belgian waffles and Jean-Claude Van Damme karate-chopping the Clydesdale horses that pull the famous Budweiser beer wagon, a serious fear besets the opposition. InBev has a history of downsizing its acquisitions, selling off assets and cutting jobs. Some fear that as many as 2,000 blue- and white-collar jobs could be lost at the St Louis brewery and its corporate headquarters. Busch’s amusement parks around the country might be sold and Grant’s Farm, where the Busch family has opened part of its estate to the public, could close.
The Anheuser-Busch board will formally reject the offer, but St Louisans remain wary of any talk of takeovers. They saw many jobs lost when May Department Stores was bought in 2005. They saw hundreds laid off and their airport largely emptied when Trans World Airlines, which used St Louis as a hub, went under in 2001. They have seen many local businesses shuttered and former corporate headquarters standing empty. And now, they fear, they will not even have a locally owned glass of beer to drown their sorrows in.
MISSOURI’S politicians, from the lowliest alderman to the governor himself, are up in arms. Its Republican senator, Kit Bond, and its Democratic one, Claire McCaskill, have put aside differences and are asking the Justice Department to step in. The governor of Missouri, Matt Blunt, has ordered state agencies to do all they can to block the dreadful move. The cause is InBev of Belgium’s $46 billion bid for Anheuser-Busch. Busch brews Budweiser, probably America’s most famous beer and the world’s bestselling one. The company, though not the largest employer in St Louis, has its headquarters there and is a huge part of the city’s identity.
Patriotic beer-lovers have mounted a campaign to keep Budweiser in American hands. Websites appeared overnight once news of the bid broke and have so far collected around 70,000 signatures on electronic petitions. Yard signs and bumper stickers have sprouted, and on June 14th protesters marched to Busch stadium, one of the many fruits of Anheuser-Busch’s 150 years in St Louis.
Despite the local jokes about pouring Bud on Belgian waffles and Jean-Claude Van Damme karate-chopping the Clydesdale horses that pull the famous Budweiser beer wagon, a serious fear besets the opposition. InBev has a history of downsizing its acquisitions, selling off assets and cutting jobs. Some fear that as many as 2,000 blue- and white-collar jobs could be lost at the St Louis brewery and its corporate headquarters. Busch’s amusement parks around the country might be sold and Grant’s Farm, where the Busch family has opened part of its estate to the public, could close.
The Anheuser-Busch board will formally reject the offer, but St Louisans remain wary of any talk of takeovers. They saw many jobs lost when May Department Stores was bought in 2005. They saw hundreds laid off and their airport largely emptied when Trans World Airlines, which used St Louis as a hub, went under in 2001. They have seen many local businesses shuttered and former corporate headquarters standing empty. And now, they fear, they will not even have a locally owned glass of beer to drown their sorrows in.
World - The Price of a Tomato
A CAMPAIGN to improve the low wages and awful labour conditions of tomato pickers in Florida has notched up a substantial victory over farm owners and their biggest clients, the fast-food chains. After one embarrassment on top of another, Burger King backed down last month and reached a ground-breaking agreement with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, representing mostly seasonal farmworkers from Mexico, Central America and Haiti. The Miami-based company agreed to pay them one cent more for every pound (450g) of tomatoes they pick, and to improve their working conditions.
Florida is the leading winter supplier of tomatoes to America, providing more than 80% of shipments, according to the Florida Tomato Committee. The new agreement came after years of pressure on the growers and fast-food chains, which intensified over the past six months and included a congressional hearing at which growers were accused of enslaving and mistreating their workers.
Some companies, led by Taco Bell, had agreed as early as 2005 to pay the extra cent the farmworkers were demanding. McDonald’s followed suit last year. But the powerful Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, which represents 90% of the state’s producers held out. It threatened to fine anyone who paid the extra cent a whopping $100,000.
The extra cent a pound is the first pay increase workers have received in 30 years. Even with it, a picker would have to fill 15 32-pound buckets an hour to earn Florida’s minimum wage of $6.79—a tall order in the broiling sun. A campaign in favour of the workers has in recent months secured the backing of members of Congress and many church groups. In April a petition with 85,000 signatures was delivered to Burger King. The firm was also embarrassed by press revelations that two of its officials had anonymously posted demeaning comments online about the workers, calling them “bloodsuckers” and “the lowest form of human life”.
The coalition is still on the warpath. It wants other big buyers to pay the extra cent. It is targeting Wal-Mart, as well as the Subway sandwich store chain, Chipotle restaurants, and Whole Foods supermarkets. But most of all it wants people to think about what goes into the sauce they slather on their burgers
Florida is the leading winter supplier of tomatoes to America, providing more than 80% of shipments, according to the Florida Tomato Committee. The new agreement came after years of pressure on the growers and fast-food chains, which intensified over the past six months and included a congressional hearing at which growers were accused of enslaving and mistreating their workers.
Some companies, led by Taco Bell, had agreed as early as 2005 to pay the extra cent the farmworkers were demanding. McDonald’s followed suit last year. But the powerful Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, which represents 90% of the state’s producers held out. It threatened to fine anyone who paid the extra cent a whopping $100,000.
The extra cent a pound is the first pay increase workers have received in 30 years. Even with it, a picker would have to fill 15 32-pound buckets an hour to earn Florida’s minimum wage of $6.79—a tall order in the broiling sun. A campaign in favour of the workers has in recent months secured the backing of members of Congress and many church groups. In April a petition with 85,000 signatures was delivered to Burger King. The firm was also embarrassed by press revelations that two of its officials had anonymously posted demeaning comments online about the workers, calling them “bloodsuckers” and “the lowest form of human life”.
The coalition is still on the warpath. It wants other big buyers to pay the extra cent. It is targeting Wal-Mart, as well as the Subway sandwich store chain, Chipotle restaurants, and Whole Foods supermarkets. But most of all it wants people to think about what goes into the sauce they slather on their burgers
World - Anyone for Cocktails ( Cuba)
THE diplomatic sanctions imposed by the European Union after Cuba jailed 75 dissidents in 2003 were hardly painful. They mainly consisted of restricting political contacts and inviting dissidents to embassy functions, prompting a boycott by Cuban officials that became known as the “cocktail war”. The sanctions were suspended in 2005. Nevertheless, the EU’s decision on June 19th to lift them was symbolically important. It was another small indication that as Cuba edges towards life after Fidel Castro, relations between the communist island and the outside world are evolving too.
The EU’s decision was a surprise. The socialist government in Spain—the largest European investor in Cuba—has long wanted closer ties. Last year its foreign minister began regular talks with his Cuban counterpart. But the former Communist countries of eastern Europe, together with Sweden, were reluctant to drop the sanctions while most of the dissidents arrested in 2003 remain in jail.
They were won over by the notion that things are starting to change in Cuba, especially since Fidel Castro formally handed over the presidency to his brother, Raúl, in February. Mainly this has involved small economic steps, such as dropping bans on Cubans owning various consumer durables and turning more state land over to private farming. In lifting the sanctions, the EU reiterated its calls for Cuba to release all political prisoners, implement the international human-rights covenants that it recently signed, and make “real progress towards a pluralist democracy”.
Cuba’s reaction to the EU’s move was itself telling. In an article on a Cuban website, Fidel Castro fulminated against “enormous hypocrisy” (because the EU also agreed a streamlined procedure to expel illegal migrants, who include many Latin Americans). Europe, he said, wanted “impunity for those who would hand [Cuba] over to imperialism”. But in an apparent sign that it is no longer taboo to disagree with the comandante, Cuba’s foreign minister, Felipe Pérez Roque, described the move as “a step in the right direction”.
The United States is unlikely to follow Europe’s lead. According to Caleb McCarry, whom George Bush appointed as his “Cuba transition co-ordinator”, Raúl Castro’s government would need to free all political prisoners, allow civil and political freedom and open “a pathway to free and fair elections” before America would relax its 46-year trade embargo. Such changes are unlikely as long as Fidel lives, and are not inevitable thereafter.
Any change in American policy therefore depends on the outcome of the presidential election. Barack Obama has said that he would reverse restrictions on remittances and family visits to Cuba imposed by Mr Bush. That might be a prelude to bigger policy changes. John McCain would maintain the existing policy.
As for Latin America, it has no appetite for isolating Cuba, says José Miguel Insulza, the secretary-general of the Organisation of American States. Since illness forced Fidel to turn over his powers two years ago, several Latin American countries have sought closer relations with Cuba. In January Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, visited the island with a string of businessmen in tow, signing trade and investment deals worth $1 billion.
Mexico’s president, Felipe Calderón, has reversed his predecessor’s policy of speaking out against the lack of human rights in Cuba, and has restored his country’s traditionally close ties. Earlier this year Patricia Espinosa, Mexico’s foreign minister, renegotiated $400m of debt on which Cuba had defaulted. Cultural exchanges have increased, and Mr Calderón is expected to visit Havana soon.
This closer embrace of Cuba mixes self-interest with calculation. In Mexico, as in the United States and Spain, Cuba is a domestic political issue. Some commentators argue that in repairing relations, Mr Calderón hopes to appease the left-wing opposition, which disputed his election victory in 2006. Instability in Cuba, just 135 miles (220km) away across the Yucatán Channel, could pose a security threat to Mexico, argues Luis Rubio, a political analyst.
Both Brazil and Mexico see business opportunities on the island, especially since Fidel’s successors are likely to be more open to foreign investment. And though they won’t say so publicly, diplomats from these countries see closer ties as a way of balancing the influence of Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s president, who has replaced the Soviet Union as Cuba’s main provider of aid. Unlike Mr Chávez, they will quietly support political liberalisation in Cuba, they say. They believe that Raúl Castro worries about Cuba’s dependence on Venezuela and China. Some officials in Washington accept this argument, and say they are happy to see Latin American democracies seeking influence where the United States cannot.
However, not everyone in Latin America or Europe takes that view. Supporters of the jailed dissidents were critical of the EU’s move. Over the past two decades, Latin American governments, egged on by outsiders, have signed international agreements that oblige them to support democracy and human rights in the region. In disregarding these when it comes to Cuba, both they and the EU are being irresponsible, says Jorge Castañeda, a former Mexican foreign minister.
What is certainly true is that those who argue for constructive engagement as a way to bring change in Cuba have little to show for it so far. But the American trade embargo has failed even more manifestly, as well as inflicting harm on ordinary Cubans. So far, change in Cuba has come in tiny, glacial movements. Many outsiders are betting that over the next year or two the pace will increase
The EU’s decision was a surprise. The socialist government in Spain—the largest European investor in Cuba—has long wanted closer ties. Last year its foreign minister began regular talks with his Cuban counterpart. But the former Communist countries of eastern Europe, together with Sweden, were reluctant to drop the sanctions while most of the dissidents arrested in 2003 remain in jail.
They were won over by the notion that things are starting to change in Cuba, especially since Fidel Castro formally handed over the presidency to his brother, Raúl, in February. Mainly this has involved small economic steps, such as dropping bans on Cubans owning various consumer durables and turning more state land over to private farming. In lifting the sanctions, the EU reiterated its calls for Cuba to release all political prisoners, implement the international human-rights covenants that it recently signed, and make “real progress towards a pluralist democracy”.
Cuba’s reaction to the EU’s move was itself telling. In an article on a Cuban website, Fidel Castro fulminated against “enormous hypocrisy” (because the EU also agreed a streamlined procedure to expel illegal migrants, who include many Latin Americans). Europe, he said, wanted “impunity for those who would hand [Cuba] over to imperialism”. But in an apparent sign that it is no longer taboo to disagree with the comandante, Cuba’s foreign minister, Felipe Pérez Roque, described the move as “a step in the right direction”.
The United States is unlikely to follow Europe’s lead. According to Caleb McCarry, whom George Bush appointed as his “Cuba transition co-ordinator”, Raúl Castro’s government would need to free all political prisoners, allow civil and political freedom and open “a pathway to free and fair elections” before America would relax its 46-year trade embargo. Such changes are unlikely as long as Fidel lives, and are not inevitable thereafter.
Any change in American policy therefore depends on the outcome of the presidential election. Barack Obama has said that he would reverse restrictions on remittances and family visits to Cuba imposed by Mr Bush. That might be a prelude to bigger policy changes. John McCain would maintain the existing policy.
As for Latin America, it has no appetite for isolating Cuba, says José Miguel Insulza, the secretary-general of the Organisation of American States. Since illness forced Fidel to turn over his powers two years ago, several Latin American countries have sought closer relations with Cuba. In January Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, visited the island with a string of businessmen in tow, signing trade and investment deals worth $1 billion.
Mexico’s president, Felipe Calderón, has reversed his predecessor’s policy of speaking out against the lack of human rights in Cuba, and has restored his country’s traditionally close ties. Earlier this year Patricia Espinosa, Mexico’s foreign minister, renegotiated $400m of debt on which Cuba had defaulted. Cultural exchanges have increased, and Mr Calderón is expected to visit Havana soon.
This closer embrace of Cuba mixes self-interest with calculation. In Mexico, as in the United States and Spain, Cuba is a domestic political issue. Some commentators argue that in repairing relations, Mr Calderón hopes to appease the left-wing opposition, which disputed his election victory in 2006. Instability in Cuba, just 135 miles (220km) away across the Yucatán Channel, could pose a security threat to Mexico, argues Luis Rubio, a political analyst.
Both Brazil and Mexico see business opportunities on the island, especially since Fidel’s successors are likely to be more open to foreign investment. And though they won’t say so publicly, diplomats from these countries see closer ties as a way of balancing the influence of Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s president, who has replaced the Soviet Union as Cuba’s main provider of aid. Unlike Mr Chávez, they will quietly support political liberalisation in Cuba, they say. They believe that Raúl Castro worries about Cuba’s dependence on Venezuela and China. Some officials in Washington accept this argument, and say they are happy to see Latin American democracies seeking influence where the United States cannot.
However, not everyone in Latin America or Europe takes that view. Supporters of the jailed dissidents were critical of the EU’s move. Over the past two decades, Latin American governments, egged on by outsiders, have signed international agreements that oblige them to support democracy and human rights in the region. In disregarding these when it comes to Cuba, both they and the EU are being irresponsible, says Jorge Castañeda, a former Mexican foreign minister.
What is certainly true is that those who argue for constructive engagement as a way to bring change in Cuba have little to show for it so far. But the American trade embargo has failed even more manifestly, as well as inflicting harm on ordinary Cubans. So far, change in Cuba has come in tiny, glacial movements. Many outsiders are betting that over the next year or two the pace will increase
World - Give a fish a bad name (Chile)
A GENERATION ago, Puerto Montt, the last town before southern Chile breaks up into a myriad of islands and fjords, was such a dead place that wags changed its prefix to “Muerto” Montt. Nowadays it is booming, thanks to salmon farming, an industry that last year produced $2.2 billion in export revenues. That makes Chile the world’s second-largest exporter of salmon after Norway. But some people worry that the industry has grown too fast for its own good.
Output is now stagnating, mainly because of the prevalence of diseases among the fish. These include infectious salmon anaemia, a virus that first appeared in Norway in the 1980s but from which Chile had remained free until last year. As if that was not enough, a report in the New York Times in March suggested that antibiotic and hormone residues could make Chilean salmon unsafe to eat.
The industry vigorously denies this—and it may well be right. But its defence has been impeded by a lack of hard data. For example, the National Fisheries Service, the government regulator, keeps no national register of the quantity of antibiotics administered to salmon in their feed.
Hitherto, the evidence has been that Chilean salmon is no worse than other farmed fish—and may be better. Importers have occasionally rejected shipments because of traces of malachite green, a forbidden fungicide, and, on one occasion in Japan, because of excess antibiotic residues.
But a study by American and Canadian scientists published in Science in 2004 found that the Chilean fish contained significantly lower levels of contaminants such as PCBs and dioxins than European salmon (although more than wild salmon). That was probably because Chilean fishmeal, used as feed, comes from cleaner waters.
Fundación Terram, a Chilean environmental outfit, supports the industry’s claim that it doesn’t use hormones. It agrees that the farms cease to administer antibiotics well before harvesting the salmon, as food-safety regulations in importing countries require. José Miguel Burgos of Aquagestión, one of several inspection laboratories in Puerto Montt, says that it is very difficult for the farms to befool the system of mandatory pre-harvest analysis of antibiotic residues. Aquagestión’s tests mainly follow American norms, which ban residues of all but one antibiotic.
Nevertheless, antibiotics are used far more heavily in Chile than in Norway. That is partly to fight salmonid rickettsial septicaemia, a deadly infection widespread in Chile for which vaccines are only now being tested. But industry sources concede that managers at the farms, whose pay depends partly on keeping more fish alive, tend to overdose them on antibiotics. Sticking to recommended doses would cut their use significantly, reckons César Barros, the president of SalmonChile, the industry association. He wants maximum doses to be written into regulations.
Cutting reliance on antibiotics further requires preventing diseases from spreading. The industry argues that rationalising the permit system would help in this. Chilean farms are closer together and more densely stocked than their Norwegian counterparts. As the industry has grown, companies have acquired sites in several different places. They would like to be able to swap permits, to consolidate their operations in a single bay. They say this would enable sites to be left fallow for longer periods, allowing residues to disperse.
A team from the United States’ Food and Drug Administration recently inspected Chilean salmon farms. Chile’s government has set up a working group to look into the industry’s problems. Tighter production limits may have to be set for individual farms. All sides agree that the fisheries service needs more resources.
These problems come at a difficult time: high fuel prices and the appreciation of the Chilean peso against the dollar mean that most producers will lose money this year, according to Mr Barros. But Chile’s salmon farmers still have other advantages, including plenty of room to expand in clean waters and cheaper labour than competitors elsewhere. Provided it cleans up parts of its act, the salmon industry should still have a profitable future.
Output is now stagnating, mainly because of the prevalence of diseases among the fish. These include infectious salmon anaemia, a virus that first appeared in Norway in the 1980s but from which Chile had remained free until last year. As if that was not enough, a report in the New York Times in March suggested that antibiotic and hormone residues could make Chilean salmon unsafe to eat.
The industry vigorously denies this—and it may well be right. But its defence has been impeded by a lack of hard data. For example, the National Fisheries Service, the government regulator, keeps no national register of the quantity of antibiotics administered to salmon in their feed.
Hitherto, the evidence has been that Chilean salmon is no worse than other farmed fish—and may be better. Importers have occasionally rejected shipments because of traces of malachite green, a forbidden fungicide, and, on one occasion in Japan, because of excess antibiotic residues.
But a study by American and Canadian scientists published in Science in 2004 found that the Chilean fish contained significantly lower levels of contaminants such as PCBs and dioxins than European salmon (although more than wild salmon). That was probably because Chilean fishmeal, used as feed, comes from cleaner waters.
Fundación Terram, a Chilean environmental outfit, supports the industry’s claim that it doesn’t use hormones. It agrees that the farms cease to administer antibiotics well before harvesting the salmon, as food-safety regulations in importing countries require. José Miguel Burgos of Aquagestión, one of several inspection laboratories in Puerto Montt, says that it is very difficult for the farms to befool the system of mandatory pre-harvest analysis of antibiotic residues. Aquagestión’s tests mainly follow American norms, which ban residues of all but one antibiotic.
Nevertheless, antibiotics are used far more heavily in Chile than in Norway. That is partly to fight salmonid rickettsial septicaemia, a deadly infection widespread in Chile for which vaccines are only now being tested. But industry sources concede that managers at the farms, whose pay depends partly on keeping more fish alive, tend to overdose them on antibiotics. Sticking to recommended doses would cut their use significantly, reckons César Barros, the president of SalmonChile, the industry association. He wants maximum doses to be written into regulations.
Cutting reliance on antibiotics further requires preventing diseases from spreading. The industry argues that rationalising the permit system would help in this. Chilean farms are closer together and more densely stocked than their Norwegian counterparts. As the industry has grown, companies have acquired sites in several different places. They would like to be able to swap permits, to consolidate their operations in a single bay. They say this would enable sites to be left fallow for longer periods, allowing residues to disperse.
A team from the United States’ Food and Drug Administration recently inspected Chilean salmon farms. Chile’s government has set up a working group to look into the industry’s problems. Tighter production limits may have to be set for individual farms. All sides agree that the fisheries service needs more resources.
These problems come at a difficult time: high fuel prices and the appreciation of the Chilean peso against the dollar mean that most producers will lose money this year, according to Mr Barros. But Chile’s salmon farmers still have other advantages, including plenty of room to expand in clean waters and cheaper labour than competitors elsewhere. Provided it cleans up parts of its act, the salmon industry should still have a profitable future.
Fun - The Crowd within
A battle of ideas is going on inside your mind
THAT problem solving becomes easier when more minds are put to the task is no more than common sense. But the phenomenon goes further than that. Ask two people to answer a question like “how many windows are there on a London double-decker bus” and average their answers. Their combined guesses will usually be more accurate than if just one person had been asked. Ask a crowd, rather than a pair, and the average is often very close to the truth. The phenomenon was called “the wisdom of crowds” by James Surowiecki, a columnist for the New Yorker who wrote a book about it. Now a pair of psychologists have found an intriguing corollary. They have discovered that two guesses made by the same person at different times are also better than one.
That is strange. Until now, psychologists have assumed that when people make a guess, they make the most accurate guess that they can. Ask them to make a second and it should, by definition, be less accurate. If that were true, averaging the first and second guesses should decrease the accuracy. Yet Edward Vul at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harold Pashler at the University of California, San Diego, have revealed in a study just published in Psychological Science that the average of first and second guesses is indeed better than either guess on its own.
The two researchers asked 428 people eight questions drawn from the “CIA World Factbook”: for example, “What percentage of the world’s airports are in the USA?” Half the participants were unexpectedly asked to make a second, different guess immediately after they completed the initial questionnaire. The other half were asked to make a second guess three weeks later.
Dr Vul and Dr Pashler found that in both circumstances the average of the two guesses was better than either guess on its own. They also noticed that the interval between the first and second guesses determined how accurate that average was. Second guesses made immediately improved accuracy by an average of 6.5%; those made after three weeks improved the accuracy by 16%.
Even after three weeks, the result is still only one-third as good as the wisdom of several different people. But that this happens at all raises questions about “individuality” within an individual. If guesses can shift almost at random, where are they coming from?
One answer could be that they are evidence for the “generate and test” model of creative thinking. This suggests that the brain is constantly creating hypotheses about the world and checking them against reality. Those that pass muster are adopted. Guessing the answers to questions you do not know the correct answer to, but have some idea of what the right answer ought to look like, could tap into such a system. A hive mind buzzing with ideas, as it were, but inside a single skull
THAT problem solving becomes easier when more minds are put to the task is no more than common sense. But the phenomenon goes further than that. Ask two people to answer a question like “how many windows are there on a London double-decker bus” and average their answers. Their combined guesses will usually be more accurate than if just one person had been asked. Ask a crowd, rather than a pair, and the average is often very close to the truth. The phenomenon was called “the wisdom of crowds” by James Surowiecki, a columnist for the New Yorker who wrote a book about it. Now a pair of psychologists have found an intriguing corollary. They have discovered that two guesses made by the same person at different times are also better than one.
That is strange. Until now, psychologists have assumed that when people make a guess, they make the most accurate guess that they can. Ask them to make a second and it should, by definition, be less accurate. If that were true, averaging the first and second guesses should decrease the accuracy. Yet Edward Vul at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harold Pashler at the University of California, San Diego, have revealed in a study just published in Psychological Science that the average of first and second guesses is indeed better than either guess on its own.
The two researchers asked 428 people eight questions drawn from the “CIA World Factbook”: for example, “What percentage of the world’s airports are in the USA?” Half the participants were unexpectedly asked to make a second, different guess immediately after they completed the initial questionnaire. The other half were asked to make a second guess three weeks later.
Dr Vul and Dr Pashler found that in both circumstances the average of the two guesses was better than either guess on its own. They also noticed that the interval between the first and second guesses determined how accurate that average was. Second guesses made immediately improved accuracy by an average of 6.5%; those made after three weeks improved the accuracy by 16%.
Even after three weeks, the result is still only one-third as good as the wisdom of several different people. But that this happens at all raises questions about “individuality” within an individual. If guesses can shift almost at random, where are they coming from?
One answer could be that they are evidence for the “generate and test” model of creative thinking. This suggests that the brain is constantly creating hypotheses about the world and checking them against reality. Those that pass muster are adopted. Guessing the answers to questions you do not know the correct answer to, but have some idea of what the right answer ought to look like, could tap into such a system. A hive mind buzzing with ideas, as it were, but inside a single skull
India - Manmohan singh's burning ambition
IN FOUR years as India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh has come to resemble a bearded and turbaned Aunt Sally. A more quarrelsome government than his would be hard to recreate: it comprises his centrist Congress party and a dozen small leftist and regional outfits, and relies for a parliamentary majority on the “outside” support of India’s Communist parties. And Mr Singh has little control over this mutinous mix; his party boss, Sonia Gandhi, the Italian-born widow of a murdered Congress leader, runs the show. This arrangement has assured Mr Singh many brickbats, and little freedom to dodge.
But ahead of the latest volley—at “crisis” talks between the government and Communists on June 25th—Mr Singh allegedly threatened to up his stake and quit. At the least, he appears to have lobbied Mrs Gandhi hard on behalf of a controversial policy that caused the crisis: a civil-nuclear co-operation agreement with America, forged by Mr Singh and President George Bush in 2005. This pact, which still needs approval from other countries involved in nuclear issues and a final sign-off by America’s Congress, would provide energy-starved India with nuclear fuel and technology that it badly needs, without forcing it to submit to the strictures of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). An unprecedented recognition of India’s nuclear-armed status and its international importance, this promised to be Mr Singh’s greatest achievement in foreign policy, or indeed in anything else.
But the Communists, anti-American to their sandalled feet, loathe it. If, as the next stage in an approvals process that is already far behind schedule, the government submits the deal to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear guardian, the Communists say they will forsake it. This week’s meeting was, as it turned out, the government’s latest unsuccessful attempt to dissuade them. Another meeting is due in a fortnight.
So the government appears to have an uncomfortable choice. It can abandon the deal, which would be embarrassing. This would suggest that India is unable to honour the terms of a simple bilateral agreement—even one stacked in its favour. Or else the government can press ahead with the deal, and risk being reduced to a parliamentary minority, unable to pass legislation, and vulnerable to a vote of no-confidence. An election, due by May 2009, might ensue towards the end of this year.
If this transpires, the government might nonetheless salvage the deal, though it would be awfully tight. As a dying act, it could submit the agreement to the IAEA’s board, and hope that fair winds and American stewardship see it through. The IAEA would probably approve the pact. The 45-member Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG), its next destination, might prove stickier.
Several NSG members, including Austria and Ireland, are concerned about the deal’s ramifications for the anti-proliferation effort. China, which reasonably suspects America of trying to plump up India as a counterweight to its own rise, may also want to scupper it. It will take time and muscular American influence to override these obstacles—and, in the dying days of Mr Bush’s administration, both are likely to be in short supply.
Indeed, it is possible that the NSG might approve the deal, but leave the American Congress too little time to debate it before Mr Bush quits office on January 19th. That could even leave every NSG member except America jostling for lucrative nuclear contracts with India, with France and Russia at the head of the pack.
Plainly, if the deal is to be done, it needs doing quickly. So why, after his alleged flutter of derring-do, is Mr Singh not risking more to push it through? After all, even the government’s worst fear, an early election, would cost it only a few months of its term. Only he and Mrs Gandhi may know the answer. Yet it is clear that for Indian parliamentarians, more than two-thirds of whom can expect to lose their seats in the coming election, a few more months matter greatly. And the nuclear deal, an example of the sort of highfalutin foreign policy that bothers only a few high-powered ministers, journalists and others in India, may not matter much. Moreover, having once been shy of facing an election, Congress and its partners are suddenly terrified.
Driven by high-cost oil, inflation has leapt to 11%—the highest rate in over a decade (see chart). Food prices have risen especially fast, so that inflation disproportionately hurts poor Indian voters, ie, the vast majority of them. On June 24th the central bank raised its main lending rate to 8.5%—another recent record high—in response. There is little else the government and its servants can do. Recent buoyant revenues, fruits of 9% annual economic growth, have been poured into vast welfare schemes: to employ rural paupers, forgive loans to small farmers, and so on. With a gaping budget deficit to worry about (by one forecast 9.4% of GDP this year), the government has little cash to spare for the inflation-afflicted.
This is excellent news for Congress’s main rival, the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It was until recently stricken by a surprising election defeat in 2004. But since naming L.K. Advani, an octogenarian bruiser, as its prime-ministerial candidate last December, the party has been perking up. A string of state election victories—including in May in Karnataka, the first southern state to elect a BJP government—has also spread cheer in its well-drilled ranks. Surging inflation, along with an expectation of slower economic growth, has furnished the party with a potentially election-winning issue. Raising fears of the Muslim bogey—the BJP’s preferred manifesto topper in some states with a history of communal tension—does not fly in the relatively pacific south. But slamming Congress for, say, squandering the wealth that BJP policies did much to create, might serve it well everywhere.
Against the threat of diplomatic humiliation and election defeat, the government seems, Micawber-like, to be hoping that something will turn up. Its prayers are mostly for a bumper autumn harvest, to rein in food-price inflation towards the end of the year. This would be a blessing for India’s poor millions. But with prices sure to stay high, it might not convince many of this government’s merits. That would surely take altogether more decisive leadership—of a kind that America thought it had identified in India, and rewarded.
But ahead of the latest volley—at “crisis” talks between the government and Communists on June 25th—Mr Singh allegedly threatened to up his stake and quit. At the least, he appears to have lobbied Mrs Gandhi hard on behalf of a controversial policy that caused the crisis: a civil-nuclear co-operation agreement with America, forged by Mr Singh and President George Bush in 2005. This pact, which still needs approval from other countries involved in nuclear issues and a final sign-off by America’s Congress, would provide energy-starved India with nuclear fuel and technology that it badly needs, without forcing it to submit to the strictures of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). An unprecedented recognition of India’s nuclear-armed status and its international importance, this promised to be Mr Singh’s greatest achievement in foreign policy, or indeed in anything else.
But the Communists, anti-American to their sandalled feet, loathe it. If, as the next stage in an approvals process that is already far behind schedule, the government submits the deal to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear guardian, the Communists say they will forsake it. This week’s meeting was, as it turned out, the government’s latest unsuccessful attempt to dissuade them. Another meeting is due in a fortnight.
So the government appears to have an uncomfortable choice. It can abandon the deal, which would be embarrassing. This would suggest that India is unable to honour the terms of a simple bilateral agreement—even one stacked in its favour. Or else the government can press ahead with the deal, and risk being reduced to a parliamentary minority, unable to pass legislation, and vulnerable to a vote of no-confidence. An election, due by May 2009, might ensue towards the end of this year.
If this transpires, the government might nonetheless salvage the deal, though it would be awfully tight. As a dying act, it could submit the agreement to the IAEA’s board, and hope that fair winds and American stewardship see it through. The IAEA would probably approve the pact. The 45-member Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG), its next destination, might prove stickier.
Several NSG members, including Austria and Ireland, are concerned about the deal’s ramifications for the anti-proliferation effort. China, which reasonably suspects America of trying to plump up India as a counterweight to its own rise, may also want to scupper it. It will take time and muscular American influence to override these obstacles—and, in the dying days of Mr Bush’s administration, both are likely to be in short supply.
Indeed, it is possible that the NSG might approve the deal, but leave the American Congress too little time to debate it before Mr Bush quits office on January 19th. That could even leave every NSG member except America jostling for lucrative nuclear contracts with India, with France and Russia at the head of the pack.
Plainly, if the deal is to be done, it needs doing quickly. So why, after his alleged flutter of derring-do, is Mr Singh not risking more to push it through? After all, even the government’s worst fear, an early election, would cost it only a few months of its term. Only he and Mrs Gandhi may know the answer. Yet it is clear that for Indian parliamentarians, more than two-thirds of whom can expect to lose their seats in the coming election, a few more months matter greatly. And the nuclear deal, an example of the sort of highfalutin foreign policy that bothers only a few high-powered ministers, journalists and others in India, may not matter much. Moreover, having once been shy of facing an election, Congress and its partners are suddenly terrified.
Driven by high-cost oil, inflation has leapt to 11%—the highest rate in over a decade (see chart). Food prices have risen especially fast, so that inflation disproportionately hurts poor Indian voters, ie, the vast majority of them. On June 24th the central bank raised its main lending rate to 8.5%—another recent record high—in response. There is little else the government and its servants can do. Recent buoyant revenues, fruits of 9% annual economic growth, have been poured into vast welfare schemes: to employ rural paupers, forgive loans to small farmers, and so on. With a gaping budget deficit to worry about (by one forecast 9.4% of GDP this year), the government has little cash to spare for the inflation-afflicted.
This is excellent news for Congress’s main rival, the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It was until recently stricken by a surprising election defeat in 2004. But since naming L.K. Advani, an octogenarian bruiser, as its prime-ministerial candidate last December, the party has been perking up. A string of state election victories—including in May in Karnataka, the first southern state to elect a BJP government—has also spread cheer in its well-drilled ranks. Surging inflation, along with an expectation of slower economic growth, has furnished the party with a potentially election-winning issue. Raising fears of the Muslim bogey—the BJP’s preferred manifesto topper in some states with a history of communal tension—does not fly in the relatively pacific south. But slamming Congress for, say, squandering the wealth that BJP policies did much to create, might serve it well everywhere.
Against the threat of diplomatic humiliation and election defeat, the government seems, Micawber-like, to be hoping that something will turn up. Its prayers are mostly for a bumper autumn harvest, to rein in food-price inflation towards the end of the year. This would be a blessing for India’s poor millions. But with prices sure to stay high, it might not convince many of this government’s merits. That would surely take altogether more decisive leadership—of a kind that America thought it had identified in India, and rewarded.
World - Going Bang
Finding the truth in the debris
AS NORTH KOREAN spectaculars go, the promise to blow up the cooling tower of the Yongbyon nuclear reactor, the source of plutonium for Kim Jong Il’s nuclear arsenal, is a welcome new departure. The North Korean leader’s previous attention-grabber was the detonation of a nuclear “device”, possibly a small bomb, in October 2006.
Ironically, it was that blast which at last got China to lean hard on Mr Kim. This helped propel forward six-party talks that also include America, South Korea, Japan and Russia. As The Economist went to press this week, China was preparing to receive a long-sought account of North Korea’s nuclear activities, America said it would lift some sanctions and start removing North Korea from its list of states that sponsor terrorism; the destruction of the Yongbyon tower was to symbolise a new turn in North Korea’s dealings with the world.
This and other work to put Yongbyon out of action is welcome. North Korea agreed in 2005 to end all its nuclear programmes in return for energy assistance, and improved trade and political relations, especially with America. But the six-party effort has been repeatedly derailed.
Further progress could likewise be painfully slow. The declaration China receives this week was expected to reveal how much plutonium Mr Kim has produced, but not what he has done with it. Christopher Hill, America’s chief negotiator, says that a tally of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and their eventual dismantling is still a long way off.
There are likely to be other gaps too. North Korea is expected to own up to possessing 30-40kg of plutonium; America estimates the true figure could be 40-50kg. The difference is several bombs’ worth. American nuclear experts have been poring over 18,000 pages of documents North Korea handed over to back up its figure.
But the documents themselves have deepened suspicion about other nefarious nuclear activities. According to Pakistan’s president, Pervez Musharraf, North Korea took delivery of some 20 centrifuge machines for spinning uranium—another potential bomb ingredient—from a black-market nuclear network headed by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the disgraced former head of one of Pakistan’s nuclear laboratories. Other evidence too points to a possible parallel nuclear effort. Mr Kim flatly denies this. But tests on the Yongbyon documents show unexplained traces of uranium.
North Korea has also given America an assurance that it is not now spreading its nuclear expertise to others, but there are doubts about that too. America recently released photographs that appear to show a nuclear reactor very like the one at Yongbyon being built secretly in Syria with North Korean help—until it was destroyed by Israel last September.
America has 45 days to look hard at the declaration Mr Kim hands over this week. That is the length of time it takes to remove a country from its terror list. The North Korean nuclear problem isn’t solved yet.
AS NORTH KOREAN spectaculars go, the promise to blow up the cooling tower of the Yongbyon nuclear reactor, the source of plutonium for Kim Jong Il’s nuclear arsenal, is a welcome new departure. The North Korean leader’s previous attention-grabber was the detonation of a nuclear “device”, possibly a small bomb, in October 2006.
Ironically, it was that blast which at last got China to lean hard on Mr Kim. This helped propel forward six-party talks that also include America, South Korea, Japan and Russia. As The Economist went to press this week, China was preparing to receive a long-sought account of North Korea’s nuclear activities, America said it would lift some sanctions and start removing North Korea from its list of states that sponsor terrorism; the destruction of the Yongbyon tower was to symbolise a new turn in North Korea’s dealings with the world.
This and other work to put Yongbyon out of action is welcome. North Korea agreed in 2005 to end all its nuclear programmes in return for energy assistance, and improved trade and political relations, especially with America. But the six-party effort has been repeatedly derailed.
Further progress could likewise be painfully slow. The declaration China receives this week was expected to reveal how much plutonium Mr Kim has produced, but not what he has done with it. Christopher Hill, America’s chief negotiator, says that a tally of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and their eventual dismantling is still a long way off.
There are likely to be other gaps too. North Korea is expected to own up to possessing 30-40kg of plutonium; America estimates the true figure could be 40-50kg. The difference is several bombs’ worth. American nuclear experts have been poring over 18,000 pages of documents North Korea handed over to back up its figure.
But the documents themselves have deepened suspicion about other nefarious nuclear activities. According to Pakistan’s president, Pervez Musharraf, North Korea took delivery of some 20 centrifuge machines for spinning uranium—another potential bomb ingredient—from a black-market nuclear network headed by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the disgraced former head of one of Pakistan’s nuclear laboratories. Other evidence too points to a possible parallel nuclear effort. Mr Kim flatly denies this. But tests on the Yongbyon documents show unexplained traces of uranium.
North Korea has also given America an assurance that it is not now spreading its nuclear expertise to others, but there are doubts about that too. America recently released photographs that appear to show a nuclear reactor very like the one at Yongbyon being built secretly in Syria with North Korean help—until it was destroyed by Israel last September.
America has 45 days to look hard at the declaration Mr Kim hands over this week. That is the length of time it takes to remove a country from its terror list. The North Korean nuclear problem isn’t solved yet.
World - A game of chicken
The government’s caution arouses suspicions about what it knows
ALMOST as long as it has had people, Hong Kong has had booths selling squawking live chickens. They are treasured by locals who spurn frozen meat, finding it tasteless. But after the latest in a series of outbreaks of avian influenza, the government has offered HK$1 billion ($128m) to put the whole business out of its misery. That is the cost of a plan unveiled on June 20th to buy back all the licences allowing live chickens to be sold.
The latest bout of bird flu was first detected in four wet markets in Hong Kong on June 11th. Since then there has been no panic. But fear has advanced in baby steps. The government at once ordered a cull of 3,500 birds being held for sale, and banned imports of live chickens from China for 21 days. The news reached the territory’s elite when exclusive restaurants had to pull chicken from their menus.
Then came reports of 4,000 ducks dying at a Guangdong farm, having contracted, it was later confirmed, the H5N1 avian-flu virus. Another 17,000 birds were killed as a precaution and Hong Kong blocked imports of all birds raised within 13km (eight miles) of the affected farm.
The source of the original infection remains a mystery. So the government decided to preclude future problems with its drastic decision to end the live-chicken trade. The traders, many from families that have used the same stalls for generations, have rejected the offer of compensation for their licences as mean and misguided. They have threatened to release live poultry on to the streets. The government is continuing to negotiate with them. Public opinion on the issue is hard to gauge: as in any market, fear is battling greed, and in this case gluttony.
The ban on chickens imported from China expires on July 2nd. But they will have to be sold the day they are imported and those unbought will be slaughtered. Yet, amid all the carnage, questions remain about the seriousness of the outbreak. Sceptics wonder if it is merely another of many efforts to ensure that nothing, particularly an outbreak of disease, can cast a shadow on the Beijing Olympics in August. Others, however, point to the strength of the government’s response, and ask if there is more to it. They recall the epidemic in 2003 of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, which killed hundreds of people before disappearing as mysteriously as it had arrived.
So some fear that the government knows more than it is letting on, particularly about the presence of avian flu in southern China, where health inspectors and the press both face constraints. Hong Kong insists all imports from China must come from specially licensed farms, but reporters from Next, a local magazine, discovered the rules being circumvented.
Since 1997, when 18 people were infected with bird flu and six died, there have been numerous outbreaks. Avian flu is not only particularly virulent; it also has the rare capacity to cross barriers between species. But it is hard to transmit. Well-cooked chicken is safe. In the past, it has been relayed through handling and poor sanitation, both issues of concern in Hong Kong. Local television stations have begun running public-service advertisements urging people to wash their hands and to wear masks if they suffer flu-like symptoms.
The second precaution seems redundant; bird flu has not yet spread from one person to another. But it underscores the bigger fear: that the disease might mutate and become broadly infectious. Given the frequency with which the disease crops up in Hong Kong, the government may be justified in not taking any chances
ALMOST as long as it has had people, Hong Kong has had booths selling squawking live chickens. They are treasured by locals who spurn frozen meat, finding it tasteless. But after the latest in a series of outbreaks of avian influenza, the government has offered HK$1 billion ($128m) to put the whole business out of its misery. That is the cost of a plan unveiled on June 20th to buy back all the licences allowing live chickens to be sold.
The latest bout of bird flu was first detected in four wet markets in Hong Kong on June 11th. Since then there has been no panic. But fear has advanced in baby steps. The government at once ordered a cull of 3,500 birds being held for sale, and banned imports of live chickens from China for 21 days. The news reached the territory’s elite when exclusive restaurants had to pull chicken from their menus.
Then came reports of 4,000 ducks dying at a Guangdong farm, having contracted, it was later confirmed, the H5N1 avian-flu virus. Another 17,000 birds were killed as a precaution and Hong Kong blocked imports of all birds raised within 13km (eight miles) of the affected farm.
The source of the original infection remains a mystery. So the government decided to preclude future problems with its drastic decision to end the live-chicken trade. The traders, many from families that have used the same stalls for generations, have rejected the offer of compensation for their licences as mean and misguided. They have threatened to release live poultry on to the streets. The government is continuing to negotiate with them. Public opinion on the issue is hard to gauge: as in any market, fear is battling greed, and in this case gluttony.
The ban on chickens imported from China expires on July 2nd. But they will have to be sold the day they are imported and those unbought will be slaughtered. Yet, amid all the carnage, questions remain about the seriousness of the outbreak. Sceptics wonder if it is merely another of many efforts to ensure that nothing, particularly an outbreak of disease, can cast a shadow on the Beijing Olympics in August. Others, however, point to the strength of the government’s response, and ask if there is more to it. They recall the epidemic in 2003 of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, which killed hundreds of people before disappearing as mysteriously as it had arrived.
So some fear that the government knows more than it is letting on, particularly about the presence of avian flu in southern China, where health inspectors and the press both face constraints. Hong Kong insists all imports from China must come from specially licensed farms, but reporters from Next, a local magazine, discovered the rules being circumvented.
Since 1997, when 18 people were infected with bird flu and six died, there have been numerous outbreaks. Avian flu is not only particularly virulent; it also has the rare capacity to cross barriers between species. But it is hard to transmit. Well-cooked chicken is safe. In the past, it has been relayed through handling and poor sanitation, both issues of concern in Hong Kong. Local television stations have begun running public-service advertisements urging people to wash their hands and to wear masks if they suffer flu-like symptoms.
The second precaution seems redundant; bird flu has not yet spread from one person to another. But it underscores the bigger fear: that the disease might mutate and become broadly infectious. Given the frequency with which the disease crops up in Hong Kong, the government may be justified in not taking any chances
World - Still a prison
Under Turkmenbashi’s shadow
WHEN Saparmurat Niyazov, Turkmenbashi or father of all the Turkmen, died of heart failure in December 2006, there was guarded optimism that better days might lie ahead for his benighted country. A year and a half later, assessments are at best mixed. This week the European Union and Turkmenistan held their first “human-rights dialogue” in the Turkmen capital, Ashgabat. Amnesty International, a human-rights lobby, marked the event with a report sharply critical of the Turkmen authorities and describing the human-rights situation in the country as “appalling”.
In truth the initial optimism was partly based on the depressing recognition that things could hardly get any worse. Turkmenistan had been Central Asia’s North Korea, albeit minus the nukes. Mr Niyazov, a long-serving president-for-life, was infamous for his bizarre personality cult and frequently changing hair-colour. His repressive regime kept a country of some 5m people in international isolation, allowing very few to travel.
Amnesty does acknowledge some improvements under Mr Niyazov’s successor, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, previously Turkmenistan’s health minister. Several political prisoners have been freed; the right to ten years of education has been restored; pension payments eliminated or reduced two years ago have been reinstated; and some restrictions on internal travel have been eased. But there is less to some of this than meets the eye. Prisoners were freed by presidential pardon, not through a transparent judicial process. Access to the internet has been broadened, but websites covering human-rights violations or criticising government policies have been blocked more thoroughly.
Some foreign governments take a much more upbeat line—perhaps in part because of Turkmenistan’s appeal as an energy treasure-house, whose reserves of natural gas are estimated to be the world’s fourth-largest. Some have “dreamlike” expectations, says one Western diplomat. In this analysis, change will of necessity be gradual, since the government cannot address all shortcomings at the same time. Reforms in education and health, for example, will take a generation, because of a shortage of qualified people.
The same diplomat says the atmosphere in Ashgabat has been transformed. The Turkmen authorities no longer refuse to talk about sensitive issues. They try to answer questions openly. Mr Berdymukhammedov has also taken steps to end the country’s isolation by making friends with neighbouring countries, such as Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan, with whom relations had been virtually frozen.
Delegations from international oil and gas companies and foreign governments have stampeded into Turkmenistan over the past year and a half. Political and business leaders from America, Russia, China and the European Union are impatient for a faster opening up. Ensuring their respective countries’ energy security with Turkmen gas is usually a higher priority than human rights.
Aware of these immense business interests, Amnesty’s report cites a Turkmen activist who says that many diplomats are too easily fobbed off with imitations of reforms rather than the real thing. This allows their countries to do business with the authorities without having to worry about being blamed for co-operating with a repressive regime. But Michael Denison, an expert on the country at Britain’s University of Leeds, points to another reason for the lack of pressure on foreign governments. Turkmenistan, he says, is a desert society that has traditionally been apolitical and has lacked an urban intelligentsia and sense of nationalism. So there is no pressure from below. That is a relief not just to Turkmenbashi’s successor, but to his foreign suitors as well.
WHEN Saparmurat Niyazov, Turkmenbashi or father of all the Turkmen, died of heart failure in December 2006, there was guarded optimism that better days might lie ahead for his benighted country. A year and a half later, assessments are at best mixed. This week the European Union and Turkmenistan held their first “human-rights dialogue” in the Turkmen capital, Ashgabat. Amnesty International, a human-rights lobby, marked the event with a report sharply critical of the Turkmen authorities and describing the human-rights situation in the country as “appalling”.
In truth the initial optimism was partly based on the depressing recognition that things could hardly get any worse. Turkmenistan had been Central Asia’s North Korea, albeit minus the nukes. Mr Niyazov, a long-serving president-for-life, was infamous for his bizarre personality cult and frequently changing hair-colour. His repressive regime kept a country of some 5m people in international isolation, allowing very few to travel.
Amnesty does acknowledge some improvements under Mr Niyazov’s successor, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, previously Turkmenistan’s health minister. Several political prisoners have been freed; the right to ten years of education has been restored; pension payments eliminated or reduced two years ago have been reinstated; and some restrictions on internal travel have been eased. But there is less to some of this than meets the eye. Prisoners were freed by presidential pardon, not through a transparent judicial process. Access to the internet has been broadened, but websites covering human-rights violations or criticising government policies have been blocked more thoroughly.
Some foreign governments take a much more upbeat line—perhaps in part because of Turkmenistan’s appeal as an energy treasure-house, whose reserves of natural gas are estimated to be the world’s fourth-largest. Some have “dreamlike” expectations, says one Western diplomat. In this analysis, change will of necessity be gradual, since the government cannot address all shortcomings at the same time. Reforms in education and health, for example, will take a generation, because of a shortage of qualified people.
The same diplomat says the atmosphere in Ashgabat has been transformed. The Turkmen authorities no longer refuse to talk about sensitive issues. They try to answer questions openly. Mr Berdymukhammedov has also taken steps to end the country’s isolation by making friends with neighbouring countries, such as Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan, with whom relations had been virtually frozen.
Delegations from international oil and gas companies and foreign governments have stampeded into Turkmenistan over the past year and a half. Political and business leaders from America, Russia, China and the European Union are impatient for a faster opening up. Ensuring their respective countries’ energy security with Turkmen gas is usually a higher priority than human rights.
Aware of these immense business interests, Amnesty’s report cites a Turkmen activist who says that many diplomats are too easily fobbed off with imitations of reforms rather than the real thing. This allows their countries to do business with the authorities without having to worry about being blamed for co-operating with a repressive regime. But Michael Denison, an expert on the country at Britain’s University of Leeds, points to another reason for the lack of pressure on foreign governments. Turkmenistan, he says, is a desert society that has traditionally been apolitical and has lacked an urban intelligentsia and sense of nationalism. So there is no pressure from below. That is a relief not just to Turkmenbashi’s successor, but to his foreign suitors as well.
World - Slippery business of Oil
Why foreign oil companies find it harder than ever to operate in Nigeria
INTERNATIONAL oil companies have never considered Nigeria a most hospitable operating environment. Long burdened with eye-watering corruption and political instability, as well as two years or so of violent attacks from local militants demanding a bigger share of the country’s oil revenues, oil workers thought conditions could not get much worse for them.
But they have. Even with record oil prices, some companies are hinting that they may leave as they grapple with the double squeeze of increasingly effective militant attacks and a government hungry to secure a larger slice of the oil profits.
Last week, militants in speedboats carried out their first notable attack on an oil facility in deep waters off the Nigerian coast, previously considered beyond their reach. The attack on a giant floating production, storage and off-loading vessel, known as an FPSO, some 120km (75 miles) out to sea, forced the operators, Royal Dutch Shell, to halt production from its Bonga oilfield, blocking off some 220,000 barrels per day of oil, or around 10% of Nigeria’s crude production.
Security had already emerged as the chief reason for the rapidly dwindling operations on land: Christophe de Margerie, boss of Total SA, says his company has been thinking twice about Nigeria because of the violence. Just to hammer that point home, hours after the Bonga attack, unidentified youths blew a hole in an onshore Chevron pipeline, cutting production by another 120,000 barrels a day. These two attacks ensured that oil prices stayed high at around $140 a barrel this week, dampening hopes raised at meeting in Saudi Arabia that an increase in Saudi production would bring the price down.
But it is not only the insurgents who are prompting the reassessment. It is Nigeria’s government. Its reinterpretation of contracts linked to the much more lucrative offshore blocks has in any event forced companies to take a hard look at the disadvantages of operating in Nigeria.
In late May, President Umaru Yar’Adua told his government to recoup $1.9 billion from Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell in revenue and taxes on offshore projects. The government accuses oil companies of reaping excessive profits and benefiting unfairly from agreements made with long-departed military regimes. But analysts who have seen the documentation say Mr Yar’Adua’s administration is rewriting the rules and applying them retroactively.
Several governments around the world have been openly changing the rules under which oil companies operate to get a bigger cut of the revenues. But the Nigerian government’s more “questionable reinterpretation” of oil contracts is a big worry, says a Lagos-based analyst.
Offshore production, mostly in the deep waters of the Gulf of Guinea, is highly lucrative for oil companies such as Shell and Exxon. Favourable offshore contracts yield about 20% profit to oil companies on every barrel, compared to only around $3 on an onshore barrel under a formula that is less affected by high oil prices. Shell said recently that the government’s actions have “potential implications” for investor confidence in Nigeria.
With oil companies making record profits, no one expects them to beat a retreat just yet. Much of the latest skirmishing is part of a larger dispute over the government’s reluctance to stump up its full share of investment in the joint ventures under which foreign firms operate. The companies are being squeezed by the government for money owed for the upkeep of the ageing infrastructure needed to keep the industry going. In a rare outbreak of harmony after weeks of quarrelling, the companies agreed to lend the government $3.5 billion, which it promises to invest in the joint ventures.
Still, Shell received another recent blow from the government when Mr Yar’Adua announced the cancellation of the company’s operating rights in an onshore region called Ogoniland. Shell ended its production there in 1993 after local protests culminated in the hanging of an environmental campaigner, Ken Saro-Wiwa, by the military regime of Sani Abacha. So this announcement was mainly symbolic.
Mr Yar’Adua’s motive may have been to exploit local anger against the oil industry and score some easy political points. He certainly needs some, having accomplished little else in his first year in office. This week his peace initiative for the Delta, already rejected by the most active militant group, suffered a further setback when another armed group said it would boycott a peace summit due next month.
None of this makes the climate friendly for foreign oil firms. More than a quarter of Nigeria’s normal production of 2.5m barrels a day is kept off the market by militant violence. In a seemingly hopeful development, Nigeria’s largest militant group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), which claimed responsibility for the Bonga attack, has called a “unilateral ceasefire” starting on June 25th. But this is not the first time MEND has called off attacks, and it remains opposed to government-organised peace talks. So world oil prices could soar again on the back of Nigeria’s instability.
INTERNATIONAL oil companies have never considered Nigeria a most hospitable operating environment. Long burdened with eye-watering corruption and political instability, as well as two years or so of violent attacks from local militants demanding a bigger share of the country’s oil revenues, oil workers thought conditions could not get much worse for them.
But they have. Even with record oil prices, some companies are hinting that they may leave as they grapple with the double squeeze of increasingly effective militant attacks and a government hungry to secure a larger slice of the oil profits.
Last week, militants in speedboats carried out their first notable attack on an oil facility in deep waters off the Nigerian coast, previously considered beyond their reach. The attack on a giant floating production, storage and off-loading vessel, known as an FPSO, some 120km (75 miles) out to sea, forced the operators, Royal Dutch Shell, to halt production from its Bonga oilfield, blocking off some 220,000 barrels per day of oil, or around 10% of Nigeria’s crude production.
Security had already emerged as the chief reason for the rapidly dwindling operations on land: Christophe de Margerie, boss of Total SA, says his company has been thinking twice about Nigeria because of the violence. Just to hammer that point home, hours after the Bonga attack, unidentified youths blew a hole in an onshore Chevron pipeline, cutting production by another 120,000 barrels a day. These two attacks ensured that oil prices stayed high at around $140 a barrel this week, dampening hopes raised at meeting in Saudi Arabia that an increase in Saudi production would bring the price down.
But it is not only the insurgents who are prompting the reassessment. It is Nigeria’s government. Its reinterpretation of contracts linked to the much more lucrative offshore blocks has in any event forced companies to take a hard look at the disadvantages of operating in Nigeria.
In late May, President Umaru Yar’Adua told his government to recoup $1.9 billion from Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell in revenue and taxes on offshore projects. The government accuses oil companies of reaping excessive profits and benefiting unfairly from agreements made with long-departed military regimes. But analysts who have seen the documentation say Mr Yar’Adua’s administration is rewriting the rules and applying them retroactively.
Several governments around the world have been openly changing the rules under which oil companies operate to get a bigger cut of the revenues. But the Nigerian government’s more “questionable reinterpretation” of oil contracts is a big worry, says a Lagos-based analyst.
Offshore production, mostly in the deep waters of the Gulf of Guinea, is highly lucrative for oil companies such as Shell and Exxon. Favourable offshore contracts yield about 20% profit to oil companies on every barrel, compared to only around $3 on an onshore barrel under a formula that is less affected by high oil prices. Shell said recently that the government’s actions have “potential implications” for investor confidence in Nigeria.
With oil companies making record profits, no one expects them to beat a retreat just yet. Much of the latest skirmishing is part of a larger dispute over the government’s reluctance to stump up its full share of investment in the joint ventures under which foreign firms operate. The companies are being squeezed by the government for money owed for the upkeep of the ageing infrastructure needed to keep the industry going. In a rare outbreak of harmony after weeks of quarrelling, the companies agreed to lend the government $3.5 billion, which it promises to invest in the joint ventures.
Still, Shell received another recent blow from the government when Mr Yar’Adua announced the cancellation of the company’s operating rights in an onshore region called Ogoniland. Shell ended its production there in 1993 after local protests culminated in the hanging of an environmental campaigner, Ken Saro-Wiwa, by the military regime of Sani Abacha. So this announcement was mainly symbolic.
Mr Yar’Adua’s motive may have been to exploit local anger against the oil industry and score some easy political points. He certainly needs some, having accomplished little else in his first year in office. This week his peace initiative for the Delta, already rejected by the most active militant group, suffered a further setback when another armed group said it would boycott a peace summit due next month.
None of this makes the climate friendly for foreign oil firms. More than a quarter of Nigeria’s normal production of 2.5m barrels a day is kept off the market by militant violence. In a seemingly hopeful development, Nigeria’s largest militant group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), which claimed responsibility for the Bonga attack, has called a “unilateral ceasefire” starting on June 25th. But this is not the first time MEND has called off attacks, and it remains opposed to government-organised peace talks. So world oil prices could soar again on the back of Nigeria’s instability.
World - Turkey & The Army
ON THE evening of March 4th, a black Mercedes swept into the Ankara headquarters of Turkey’s land-forces command. It was carrying Osman Paksut, the second-highest judge on the constitutional court. His assignation with the land-forces commander, General Ilker Basbug, was meant to be secret—all the security cameras were cut off as he entered and left the building—for it came at a highly delicate moment. The secular opposition had just petitioned the court to overturn a law passed by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) to allow women to wear the Islamic-style headscarf at universities.
Less than four weeks later, on March 31st, the court said that it would take a case brought by the chief prosecutor to ban the AKP and 71 named officials, including the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the president, Abdullah Gul. The case rests on the claim that the defendants are trying to impose sharia law in Turkey.
This decision makes the meeting between Mr Paksut and General Basbug, who is tipped to replace Yasar Buyukanit as chief of the general staff when he retires in August, all the more suspicious. Indeed, it reinforces the view of many Turks that lying behind the case is an attempt by the generals to use the courts to overthrow Turkey’s mildly Islamist government in a “judicial coup”. This follows the generals’ threatened “e-coup” of April 2007, when they tried unsuccessfully to stop Mr Gul becoming president.
Few Turks would have known of the meeting had news of it not been broken by a small daily newspaper, Taraf. Since its launch last November under the motto “to think is to take sides”, Taraf (which means side in Turkish) has published a string of stories exposing the army’s efforts to undermine the AKP government. It has thus become even bigger than “the most honest and prestigious newspaper” that was the dream of its 39-year-old owner, Basar Arslan. Amid speculation that the army may be preparing a direct coup, Taraf has become a standard-bearer for the rising numbers of young and increasingly vocal Turks who say the people, not the generals, should determine the country’s future. Last week 7,000 of them gathered in central Istanbul in a rally against coups, many of them brandishing Taraf.
The paper, whose news coverage remains spotty, made its biggest splash so far when it recently published a document detailing alleged plans by the general staff to mobilise public opinion against the government and its sympathisers. The blueprint was drawn up after the AKP was returned to power for a second five-year term in July 2007. In a limp rebuttal, the top brass said it had “not approved” any such document, but stopped short of denying its existence. Indeed, much of the paper’s information comes straight from disgruntled “deep throats” within the army.
Such leaks have dented the army’s image and fuelled debate over a possible rift within the high command. Internal divisions surfaced last year when Nokta, a weekly, published excerpts from the diary of a former navy commander in which he described two abortive coup attempts in 2004. Soon afterwards, the magazine was forced to close and its editor prosecuted for libel. Might Taraf suffer a similar fate?
Taraf is already a stronger institution than Nokta. “We are changing the rules the mainstream media work by in this country,” declares Yasemin Congar, its combative deputy managing editor. Circulation, now at an average 24,000 copies every day, is growing. And this comes in the teeth of a smear campaign accusing Taraf of being financed by a powerful Islamist fraternity close to the AKP and of taking its orders from the United States.
Yet it would be easy to overstate the influence of Taraf, as indeed of civil society as a whole. “Turkish civil society barely has the strength to redirect major roads, let alone stop the generals from acting if they see it as in the national interest,” argues Howard Eissenstat, a New York-based historian. “Moreover, the high regard for the military and the particular tone of Turkish nationalism suggest that public reaction to a hard coup would be more of a ripple than a wave.” Then again, as Ms Congar noted in a recent column, “there are a few good men” in the army, whose view of Turkey’s national interest tends to favour democracy, and who will keep leaking information to Taraf.
Less than four weeks later, on March 31st, the court said that it would take a case brought by the chief prosecutor to ban the AKP and 71 named officials, including the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the president, Abdullah Gul. The case rests on the claim that the defendants are trying to impose sharia law in Turkey.
This decision makes the meeting between Mr Paksut and General Basbug, who is tipped to replace Yasar Buyukanit as chief of the general staff when he retires in August, all the more suspicious. Indeed, it reinforces the view of many Turks that lying behind the case is an attempt by the generals to use the courts to overthrow Turkey’s mildly Islamist government in a “judicial coup”. This follows the generals’ threatened “e-coup” of April 2007, when they tried unsuccessfully to stop Mr Gul becoming president.
Few Turks would have known of the meeting had news of it not been broken by a small daily newspaper, Taraf. Since its launch last November under the motto “to think is to take sides”, Taraf (which means side in Turkish) has published a string of stories exposing the army’s efforts to undermine the AKP government. It has thus become even bigger than “the most honest and prestigious newspaper” that was the dream of its 39-year-old owner, Basar Arslan. Amid speculation that the army may be preparing a direct coup, Taraf has become a standard-bearer for the rising numbers of young and increasingly vocal Turks who say the people, not the generals, should determine the country’s future. Last week 7,000 of them gathered in central Istanbul in a rally against coups, many of them brandishing Taraf.
The paper, whose news coverage remains spotty, made its biggest splash so far when it recently published a document detailing alleged plans by the general staff to mobilise public opinion against the government and its sympathisers. The blueprint was drawn up after the AKP was returned to power for a second five-year term in July 2007. In a limp rebuttal, the top brass said it had “not approved” any such document, but stopped short of denying its existence. Indeed, much of the paper’s information comes straight from disgruntled “deep throats” within the army.
Such leaks have dented the army’s image and fuelled debate over a possible rift within the high command. Internal divisions surfaced last year when Nokta, a weekly, published excerpts from the diary of a former navy commander in which he described two abortive coup attempts in 2004. Soon afterwards, the magazine was forced to close and its editor prosecuted for libel. Might Taraf suffer a similar fate?
Taraf is already a stronger institution than Nokta. “We are changing the rules the mainstream media work by in this country,” declares Yasemin Congar, its combative deputy managing editor. Circulation, now at an average 24,000 copies every day, is growing. And this comes in the teeth of a smear campaign accusing Taraf of being financed by a powerful Islamist fraternity close to the AKP and of taking its orders from the United States.
Yet it would be easy to overstate the influence of Taraf, as indeed of civil society as a whole. “Turkish civil society barely has the strength to redirect major roads, let alone stop the generals from acting if they see it as in the national interest,” argues Howard Eissenstat, a New York-based historian. “Moreover, the high regard for the military and the particular tone of Turkish nationalism suggest that public reaction to a hard coup would be more of a ripple than a wave.” Then again, as Ms Congar noted in a recent column, “there are a few good men” in the army, whose view of Turkey’s national interest tends to favour democracy, and who will keep leaking information to Taraf.
World - A matter of justice
ONCE again, the government has been thrown into a tizzy. Dozens of criminal prosecutions, many involving suspected terrorists, could be in jeopardy as a result of a ruling by the House of Lords, Britain’s highest court of appeal, deeming it unlawful for prosecutors to rely on anonymous witnesses to secure convictions. On June 26th the government announced emergency legislation in an attempt to rescue trials and block appeals in scores of cases where defendants have already been convicted. It hopes to rush through a bill before Parliament rises on July 22nd.
The law lords’ ruling, on June 18th, has already claimed its first casualty. On June 24th a murder trial at London’s Central Criminal Court, which had cost £6m, was halted after the judge told the jury it had heard evidence from “a number of witnesses that you should not have heard”. Four witnesses, using false names, had given evidence over two months from behind screens in the trial of two men accused of killing another man in East London in 2004.
Contrary to some reports, the law lords did not rule that anonymous witnesses may never be used. In an appeal brought by Iain Davis, jailed four years ago for murdering two men after a New Year’s Eve party, they said the defendant had been denied a fair trial because the identity of three key witnesses, without whose evidence Davis would not have been convicted, remained hidden from the defence. They recommended that the conviction be quashed and a new trial held.
Delivering the ruling, Lord Bingham said that the right of an accused to confront his accusers so as to be able to challenge their evidence was a long-established principle of English common law. America had adopted it as a constitutional right, and other common-law countries too considered it important. The principle was also enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights; under case law of the European court, no conviction should be based solely, or to a decisive extent, on the testimony of anonymous witnesses.
The law lords accepted that the problem of witness intimidation was real. Witnesses often would not give evidence unless their identity was withheld from the defence, and dangerous criminals might then walk free. This, Lord Bingham conceded, was a serious problem that “might well” call for urgent attention by Parliament. But the paramount object must always be to do justice. In Iain Davis’s case, the anonymity granted to witnesses hampered the conduct of the defence “in a manner and to an extent” that was unlawful and rendered the trial unfair, he said.
Police and prosecutors have increasingly resorted to promises of anonymity in order to persuade frightened witnesses to testify in cases of gangland violence and gun crime. Many fear the ruling could have a catastrophic effect on current and future prosecutions. But the government seems convinced that it can fix the problem and the Conservatives have intimated their willingness to co-operate. It may prove harder to square the new law with the human-rights legislation.
The law lords’ ruling, on June 18th, has already claimed its first casualty. On June 24th a murder trial at London’s Central Criminal Court, which had cost £6m, was halted after the judge told the jury it had heard evidence from “a number of witnesses that you should not have heard”. Four witnesses, using false names, had given evidence over two months from behind screens in the trial of two men accused of killing another man in East London in 2004.
Contrary to some reports, the law lords did not rule that anonymous witnesses may never be used. In an appeal brought by Iain Davis, jailed four years ago for murdering two men after a New Year’s Eve party, they said the defendant had been denied a fair trial because the identity of three key witnesses, without whose evidence Davis would not have been convicted, remained hidden from the defence. They recommended that the conviction be quashed and a new trial held.
Delivering the ruling, Lord Bingham said that the right of an accused to confront his accusers so as to be able to challenge their evidence was a long-established principle of English common law. America had adopted it as a constitutional right, and other common-law countries too considered it important. The principle was also enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights; under case law of the European court, no conviction should be based solely, or to a decisive extent, on the testimony of anonymous witnesses.
The law lords accepted that the problem of witness intimidation was real. Witnesses often would not give evidence unless their identity was withheld from the defence, and dangerous criminals might then walk free. This, Lord Bingham conceded, was a serious problem that “might well” call for urgent attention by Parliament. But the paramount object must always be to do justice. In Iain Davis’s case, the anonymity granted to witnesses hampered the conduct of the defence “in a manner and to an extent” that was unlawful and rendered the trial unfair, he said.
Police and prosecutors have increasingly resorted to promises of anonymity in order to persuade frightened witnesses to testify in cases of gangland violence and gun crime. Many fear the ruling could have a catastrophic effect on current and future prosecutions. But the government seems convinced that it can fix the problem and the Conservatives have intimated their willingness to co-operate. It may prove harder to square the new law with the human-rights legislation.
India - What's for breakfast today?
It was the mention of an innocuous tax cut in the Budget presented by the Finance Minister in February 2008 which took everyone quite by surprise. The FM had halved the central excise duty on breakfast cereals – mainly cornflakes, as it so tran spired later – from 16 per cent to 8 per cent.
While this excise relief is unlikely to turbo-charge an industry that has been slowly chipping away at established and entrenched eating habits of Indians, the fact is that the breakfast cereal category has been growing – in the period between 2003 and 2007 the category, according to industry players, has doubled to the current level of approximately Rs 250 crore.
Perhaps the FM had taken note of the category’s rapid growth to offer the industry some concessions, a point emphasised by Anupum Dutta, Managing Director, Kellogg India Pvt Ltd, which claims the lion’s share of the category. As he told Business Line earlier, “By reducing the excise on breakfast cereals, it has finally been recognised as a mass consumer product rather than a premium one.” Kellogg India, the largest player in the ready-to-eat cereals category with a 70 per cent value share, has for years been trying to change breakfast habits, from traditional Indian ones to low-fat cereals.
But the excise rebate is unlikely to make an impact on the prices of the top brands. It will only help the manufacturers keep their prices in check. As Dutta points out, “Kellogg has not effected a price increase in any of its products since 2005. We have so far absorbed the cost increase in input costs. The excise reduction will ensure that we continue to deliver value to the consumer despite inflation and increase in input costs.”
As far as the muesli category is concerned, there is only a general reduction in Central excise duty from 16 per cent to 14 per cent as compared to the cornflakes category where the reduction is from 16 per cent to 8 per cent. “The muesli category, therefore, has got no substantial relief in the Budget. The increase in prices of raw material greatly offsets the general decrease in excise duty of 2 per cent,” says Shyam Bagri, Chairman and Managing Director, Bagrry’s India Ltd.
So, what has contributed to the sudden rapid growth of the category over the past few years? Increasing awareness of health, growing acceptance of packaged food, rising household incomes, nuclear families are some of the macro factors driving greater demand for value-added foods. Says Kellogg’s Dutta, “Consumers realise the need and relevance of fortified, low-fat breakfast cereals as a healthy breakfast option.”
Concurs Bagri, “It’s not a niche category anymore. The category is seeing a dynamic and positive growth. Bagrry’s itself has a year-on-year growth of about 30-40 per cent. The perception and expectations of consumers are also changing; the demand is getting more elastic. However, the key factor remains the quality.”
Bagri says health-consciousness and awareness, affluence and more disposable incomes as well as the fact that people are pressed for time and need something convenient and healthy, are contributing to the increasing popularity of breakfast cereals. . “Though the traditional Indian breakfast is still predominant, the market is changing – especially in the metros and many other cities where there is high literacy and a young working population,” he adds.
Market watchers say one of the biggest inhibitors to the growth of breakfast cereals as a category has been the price points. A 475 gm pack of Kellogg’s cornflakes, for instance, would set a consumer back by Rs 125. But Dutta says the company is addressing those issues with affordable pack sizes. Says he: “Our offerings actually work the consumer pyramid quite well. Our key new initiative is the new affordable range of Kellogg’s products, to address the evening snacking occasion — an important fourth meal occasion for today’s kids — with a tasty yet healthy nutritious snack. This Kpak initiative (in four variants) is available at a price point of Rs 10. Our regular packs start at Rs 30, quite an affordable price point for many households.”
Among the oldest brands in the cornflakes category is Mohuns from the Mohan Meakins group with a national presence. With lower price points, it claims to have a major share of the market. However, the rapid growth of the category has also induced new players to throw their hat in the ring. Murginns, a brand from KCL Ltd, one of the largest paper packaging companies in the country, is the latest to enter the fray. Sanjeev Khemka, President, KCL, is convinced that breakfast cereals is the category to be in as it will grow. Says he: “I am not sure if customers are ready for ready-to-eat foods. For lunch and dinner there’s a variety of foods on offer, but not so for breakfast; it’s something that one has to make at home, when you’re rushing to school and office and there’s no time to go out and eat.” Also, as he points out, travel, smaller families and modern retail, growing health-consciousness and a willingness to try different foods has helped convenience foods grow.
KCL Foods’ range of breakfast cereals include extruded products such as honey pops and honey rings, instant porridge, muesli, a recent launch of cornflakes and a planned one of oats. KCL, which intends a quick roll-out of its products, has also launched Murginns cornflakes. Cornflakes constitute 60-65 per cent of the breakfast cereals market. The fledgling company expects to challenge the big daddy of breakfast cereals, Kellogg’s, with its aggressive pricing. While Kellogg’s is priced at Rs 125 for a 475 gm pack, Murginns is priced at Rs 95. “The main issue in breakfast cereals is affordability. We will be 30 per cent lower than the market leader and 15 per cent higher than the next lowest price. With the right pricing the market will grow; we expect market growth to be 30 per cent this year.” Khemka estimates the size of the breakfast cereals market is Rs 250-300 crore but says it’s growing fast.
However, as the category is still nascent, there will be room for enough players, says the industry. As Shyam Bagri points out, “The market is surely big enough for more players. The market will grow and expand for new and existing players, too. The key issue remains the product quality, taste as well as how healthy it is.”
The other breakfast cereals category growing rapidly is oats, with Pepsi’s Quaker Oats, a global brand, too joining the fray. Oats, which do not attract any excise duties, has been growing rapidly, says Bagri, whose Bagrry’s brand of oats is claimed to be the market leader. As the oats used in the cereals are mainly imported, there are no official figures on the size of the market. But, industry players say it’s the fastest growing segment of the breakfast cereals category with growth in “high double digits.” Oats constitute 30 per cent of the breakfast cereals in volumes and 18 per cent in value terms of the category while the top four brands constitute 90 per cent of the oats market.
Bagri says growth has been rapid because of its health benefits. “Beta glucan, found only in oats, helps lower cholesterol and blood pressure. It helps diabetics by lowering post-lunch glucose levels,” he says. With India today the world’s coronary disease and diabetic capital, oats is a category expected to record rapid growth rates as consumers get increasingly health-conscious.
While this excise relief is unlikely to turbo-charge an industry that has been slowly chipping away at established and entrenched eating habits of Indians, the fact is that the breakfast cereal category has been growing – in the period between 2003 and 2007 the category, according to industry players, has doubled to the current level of approximately Rs 250 crore.
Perhaps the FM had taken note of the category’s rapid growth to offer the industry some concessions, a point emphasised by Anupum Dutta, Managing Director, Kellogg India Pvt Ltd, which claims the lion’s share of the category. As he told Business Line earlier, “By reducing the excise on breakfast cereals, it has finally been recognised as a mass consumer product rather than a premium one.” Kellogg India, the largest player in the ready-to-eat cereals category with a 70 per cent value share, has for years been trying to change breakfast habits, from traditional Indian ones to low-fat cereals.
But the excise rebate is unlikely to make an impact on the prices of the top brands. It will only help the manufacturers keep their prices in check. As Dutta points out, “Kellogg has not effected a price increase in any of its products since 2005. We have so far absorbed the cost increase in input costs. The excise reduction will ensure that we continue to deliver value to the consumer despite inflation and increase in input costs.”
As far as the muesli category is concerned, there is only a general reduction in Central excise duty from 16 per cent to 14 per cent as compared to the cornflakes category where the reduction is from 16 per cent to 8 per cent. “The muesli category, therefore, has got no substantial relief in the Budget. The increase in prices of raw material greatly offsets the general decrease in excise duty of 2 per cent,” says Shyam Bagri, Chairman and Managing Director, Bagrry’s India Ltd.
So, what has contributed to the sudden rapid growth of the category over the past few years? Increasing awareness of health, growing acceptance of packaged food, rising household incomes, nuclear families are some of the macro factors driving greater demand for value-added foods. Says Kellogg’s Dutta, “Consumers realise the need and relevance of fortified, low-fat breakfast cereals as a healthy breakfast option.”
Concurs Bagri, “It’s not a niche category anymore. The category is seeing a dynamic and positive growth. Bagrry’s itself has a year-on-year growth of about 30-40 per cent. The perception and expectations of consumers are also changing; the demand is getting more elastic. However, the key factor remains the quality.”
Bagri says health-consciousness and awareness, affluence and more disposable incomes as well as the fact that people are pressed for time and need something convenient and healthy, are contributing to the increasing popularity of breakfast cereals. . “Though the traditional Indian breakfast is still predominant, the market is changing – especially in the metros and many other cities where there is high literacy and a young working population,” he adds.
Market watchers say one of the biggest inhibitors to the growth of breakfast cereals as a category has been the price points. A 475 gm pack of Kellogg’s cornflakes, for instance, would set a consumer back by Rs 125. But Dutta says the company is addressing those issues with affordable pack sizes. Says he: “Our offerings actually work the consumer pyramid quite well. Our key new initiative is the new affordable range of Kellogg’s products, to address the evening snacking occasion — an important fourth meal occasion for today’s kids — with a tasty yet healthy nutritious snack. This Kpak initiative (in four variants) is available at a price point of Rs 10. Our regular packs start at Rs 30, quite an affordable price point for many households.”
Among the oldest brands in the cornflakes category is Mohuns from the Mohan Meakins group with a national presence. With lower price points, it claims to have a major share of the market. However, the rapid growth of the category has also induced new players to throw their hat in the ring. Murginns, a brand from KCL Ltd, one of the largest paper packaging companies in the country, is the latest to enter the fray. Sanjeev Khemka, President, KCL, is convinced that breakfast cereals is the category to be in as it will grow. Says he: “I am not sure if customers are ready for ready-to-eat foods. For lunch and dinner there’s a variety of foods on offer, but not so for breakfast; it’s something that one has to make at home, when you’re rushing to school and office and there’s no time to go out and eat.” Also, as he points out, travel, smaller families and modern retail, growing health-consciousness and a willingness to try different foods has helped convenience foods grow.
KCL Foods’ range of breakfast cereals include extruded products such as honey pops and honey rings, instant porridge, muesli, a recent launch of cornflakes and a planned one of oats. KCL, which intends a quick roll-out of its products, has also launched Murginns cornflakes. Cornflakes constitute 60-65 per cent of the breakfast cereals market. The fledgling company expects to challenge the big daddy of breakfast cereals, Kellogg’s, with its aggressive pricing. While Kellogg’s is priced at Rs 125 for a 475 gm pack, Murginns is priced at Rs 95. “The main issue in breakfast cereals is affordability. We will be 30 per cent lower than the market leader and 15 per cent higher than the next lowest price. With the right pricing the market will grow; we expect market growth to be 30 per cent this year.” Khemka estimates the size of the breakfast cereals market is Rs 250-300 crore but says it’s growing fast.
However, as the category is still nascent, there will be room for enough players, says the industry. As Shyam Bagri points out, “The market is surely big enough for more players. The market will grow and expand for new and existing players, too. The key issue remains the product quality, taste as well as how healthy it is.”
The other breakfast cereals category growing rapidly is oats, with Pepsi’s Quaker Oats, a global brand, too joining the fray. Oats, which do not attract any excise duties, has been growing rapidly, says Bagri, whose Bagrry’s brand of oats is claimed to be the market leader. As the oats used in the cereals are mainly imported, there are no official figures on the size of the market. But, industry players say it’s the fastest growing segment of the breakfast cereals category with growth in “high double digits.” Oats constitute 30 per cent of the breakfast cereals in volumes and 18 per cent in value terms of the category while the top four brands constitute 90 per cent of the oats market.
Bagri says growth has been rapid because of its health benefits. “Beta glucan, found only in oats, helps lower cholesterol and blood pressure. It helps diabetics by lowering post-lunch glucose levels,” he says. With India today the world’s coronary disease and diabetic capital, oats is a category expected to record rapid growth rates as consumers get increasingly health-conscious.
India - Madness in the Method
Over the last year, a number of incidents have made me ponder over why our way of doing things in India is often so poor on processes and delivery of outcome. I recently went through the nightmarish process of getting home repairs organised, then the worse experience of relocating home. I am sure my life span was drastically reduced with the nail-biting suspense of wondering when things would get completed and what the final result would look like.
One big stress-inducer is what a friend (who recently relocated from the US) calls the Indian propensity for “false deadlines”. She pointed out that almost never is she given an accurate estimate of when things will get completed. Typically there is a confident delivery schedule airily announced; then, as it became clear that the job is unlikely to get completed on time, she prods the executor - (“are you sure it will be done by such-and-such time, is there any hold-up, tell me now so I can plan”, so on and so forth) – only to get no definite reply until the proclaimed deadline had come and gone. True enough, in my case the tile-laying estimated at eight days took four weeks – in comparison, the packing and moving, planned for four days only overshot this by a mere 50 per cent.
The other stress comes from just watching how things are being botched up and spotting a zillion things that could make things go faster, or at least deliver better results. Wouldn’t it be more productive and less wasteful to check that all the tiles are from the same batch and to sort out the damaged ones before laying them? But hey, that could actually result in a good finish, and get the job done on time - what fun would that be? Instead, the master layer crouched in position, told his rookie assistant to bring the tile; he then cemented it in place, spent a few minute hammering it, then leaned back and tut-tutted that it was either chipped or from some wrong batch, yanked it out and began the process once more.
With the movers it was even worse – here, you see, is the illusion of a seamless process. A supervisor roams around, clip file in hand. Uniformed workers assemble an arsenal of impressive material – imported paper, cartons and such. And yes, it is true that many things did work well – one senior packer was a delight to watch, wrapping delicates in intricate paper turbans. A little into the experience, however, the cracks in the process became evident. First, the false deadline created the inevitable stress when it became evident that the job was to take much longer – in the ensuing hurry, they found that they were short on people and materials – and soon tempers were frayed as well. Things got badly packed and subsequently damaged. The flustered supervisor helpfully numbered the boxes wrong, creating huge confusion at both ends of despatch and delivery. Instead of asking for an itemised insurance list, we were asked to give a box-by-box estimate – naturally, this was after the boxes were packed and no one had a clue about the contents other than an omnibus term of “curious items”. (No, that is not a typo – and in a better mood I would smile at his unwitting appellation for my collection of bits and bobs).
On arrival, we found that the team consisted of a group of outsourced labour. Unfortunately, no one had thought of taking them through the rudiments of the process. So one young fellow who was not part of the core team would pick up a carton (marked fragile, I would note in agitation) and then stagger to the supervisor. They would then look for the box number – and each box had many numbers scrawled on it – since no one had thought of cancelling the other numbers from previous moves of the recycled cartons. After some debate and discussion, the supervisor would then flip slowly through his chart and announce the box number and vague description of contents and then look to me to ask where it should go. Since my instructions for each box, carefully given at despatch, had been lost in the wind, I would have to quickly decide on a temporary resting place.
All this while, the rookie would be standing, holding a heavy carton in his trembling hands, which he would release with a juddering thud. As a result, while I had been promised a break-free move, I am still sighing sadly over some damaged treasures, and instead of settling in smoothly into the new home, the mess created by the badly itemised list created chaos for many days. “Will you recommend us?” asks the feedback form – and as I ponder over that question I find I am unable to assert that any other moving company would have done a much better job.
Are careful planning and faultless execution alien to the Indian way of doing things? Definitely, there are master craftsmen all over India who demonstrate excellence in outcomes. Yet, when it comes to team work and scaled up operations, things seem to fall apart: poor estimation of the quantum of work, of time taken, of the labour requirement, all lead to service experiences which are inconsistent and unsatisfying. Some of this is cultural – a reluctance to say “No, this cannot be done”, or “This is a problem”, for fear of repercussions. “Why did you not give me a more accurate estimate?” I often ask them, insisting that I would rather wait a little longer for the delivery and have it arrive on time, rather than be given false deadlines which lead to alibis and excuses when the inevitable hiccup intervenes. Another problem is the inability to look ahead and do some basic contingency planning: what if the lift doesn’t work? What if the shipment doesn’t arrive? What if the driveway is not long enough to take the truck?
And of course, the people issue – how do you ensure that a large team is trained in the most effective way of execution?
India is growing at warp speed, we all know that. The transition to a service economy is a welcome one. Yet, we need to look closer at our way of doing things, emphasising productivity, efficiency and excellence in outcomes, if we don’t want to create a habit of slipshod execution. The label “Made in India” is no longer a pejorative for our manufacturing economy. It would be heartening to see that maturity in our service sectors as well.
One big stress-inducer is what a friend (who recently relocated from the US) calls the Indian propensity for “false deadlines”. She pointed out that almost never is she given an accurate estimate of when things will get completed. Typically there is a confident delivery schedule airily announced; then, as it became clear that the job is unlikely to get completed on time, she prods the executor - (“are you sure it will be done by such-and-such time, is there any hold-up, tell me now so I can plan”, so on and so forth) – only to get no definite reply until the proclaimed deadline had come and gone. True enough, in my case the tile-laying estimated at eight days took four weeks – in comparison, the packing and moving, planned for four days only overshot this by a mere 50 per cent.
The other stress comes from just watching how things are being botched up and spotting a zillion things that could make things go faster, or at least deliver better results. Wouldn’t it be more productive and less wasteful to check that all the tiles are from the same batch and to sort out the damaged ones before laying them? But hey, that could actually result in a good finish, and get the job done on time - what fun would that be? Instead, the master layer crouched in position, told his rookie assistant to bring the tile; he then cemented it in place, spent a few minute hammering it, then leaned back and tut-tutted that it was either chipped or from some wrong batch, yanked it out and began the process once more.
With the movers it was even worse – here, you see, is the illusion of a seamless process. A supervisor roams around, clip file in hand. Uniformed workers assemble an arsenal of impressive material – imported paper, cartons and such. And yes, it is true that many things did work well – one senior packer was a delight to watch, wrapping delicates in intricate paper turbans. A little into the experience, however, the cracks in the process became evident. First, the false deadline created the inevitable stress when it became evident that the job was to take much longer – in the ensuing hurry, they found that they were short on people and materials – and soon tempers were frayed as well. Things got badly packed and subsequently damaged. The flustered supervisor helpfully numbered the boxes wrong, creating huge confusion at both ends of despatch and delivery. Instead of asking for an itemised insurance list, we were asked to give a box-by-box estimate – naturally, this was after the boxes were packed and no one had a clue about the contents other than an omnibus term of “curious items”. (No, that is not a typo – and in a better mood I would smile at his unwitting appellation for my collection of bits and bobs).
On arrival, we found that the team consisted of a group of outsourced labour. Unfortunately, no one had thought of taking them through the rudiments of the process. So one young fellow who was not part of the core team would pick up a carton (marked fragile, I would note in agitation) and then stagger to the supervisor. They would then look for the box number – and each box had many numbers scrawled on it – since no one had thought of cancelling the other numbers from previous moves of the recycled cartons. After some debate and discussion, the supervisor would then flip slowly through his chart and announce the box number and vague description of contents and then look to me to ask where it should go. Since my instructions for each box, carefully given at despatch, had been lost in the wind, I would have to quickly decide on a temporary resting place.
All this while, the rookie would be standing, holding a heavy carton in his trembling hands, which he would release with a juddering thud. As a result, while I had been promised a break-free move, I am still sighing sadly over some damaged treasures, and instead of settling in smoothly into the new home, the mess created by the badly itemised list created chaos for many days. “Will you recommend us?” asks the feedback form – and as I ponder over that question I find I am unable to assert that any other moving company would have done a much better job.
Are careful planning and faultless execution alien to the Indian way of doing things? Definitely, there are master craftsmen all over India who demonstrate excellence in outcomes. Yet, when it comes to team work and scaled up operations, things seem to fall apart: poor estimation of the quantum of work, of time taken, of the labour requirement, all lead to service experiences which are inconsistent and unsatisfying. Some of this is cultural – a reluctance to say “No, this cannot be done”, or “This is a problem”, for fear of repercussions. “Why did you not give me a more accurate estimate?” I often ask them, insisting that I would rather wait a little longer for the delivery and have it arrive on time, rather than be given false deadlines which lead to alibis and excuses when the inevitable hiccup intervenes. Another problem is the inability to look ahead and do some basic contingency planning: what if the lift doesn’t work? What if the shipment doesn’t arrive? What if the driveway is not long enough to take the truck?
And of course, the people issue – how do you ensure that a large team is trained in the most effective way of execution?
India is growing at warp speed, we all know that. The transition to a service economy is a welcome one. Yet, we need to look closer at our way of doing things, emphasising productivity, efficiency and excellence in outcomes, if we don’t want to create a habit of slipshod execution. The label “Made in India” is no longer a pejorative for our manufacturing economy. It would be heartening to see that maturity in our service sectors as well.
India - Why the consumer should not be king in India
When was the last time you heard someone warning his mobile service provider and threatening him about switching to another brand? Or when was the last time you snubbed a representative from a reputed bank/insurance company who tried selling you oneof his loan/investment products? Else, try recalling the last time you heard someone proudly brag about the dressing down he gave his MNC bank/credit card company about the poor quality of their customer response time?
The chances are that if you are in India you would be experiencing one or more of these things around you very frequently. And if you were an outsider you are most definitely likely to reach a conclusion that you’re perhaps seeing the reactions of consumers in market where they don’t have good service providers and/or the quality of service is fast deteriorating.
Now consider the reality. About 10 years ago, it used to take 15 days to three months to get a telephone installed at your residence. Today it takes less than 24 hours for an active landline connection and you can have an active mobile phone connection almost instantly. The approval time for a home loan has come down from months and weeks to 5-7 days. You can apply and get a credit card almost instantly. The time required to get cash from the bank has almost come to nil thanks to the technologies like ATMs compared to the half-day it took a while ago.
Now consider the brand choice equation. About 10 years ago there was one telecom service provider, one life insurance company and not more than 4-5 big banks to choose from. Today there are more than five telecom service brands ranging from the international giants such as Vodafone to homegrown biggie Airtel, Tata and Reliance to choose from. There are more than 10-12 insurance brands, almost all of them partnered by the world leaders. There are more than 20 banks to choose from – all of them armed with latest technologies to make your life easy. More than half-a-dozen airlines are ready to fly you through the day between different towns.
In light of this truth the above described aggressive behaviour by consumers clearly defies any logical deduction from reality. An even more intriguing aspect is the consumer behaviour before all this. Ten years ago, when the linesman from the State-owned BSNL came and installed the telephone after a month-and-a-half, most consumers very happily offered him sweets. That time has now been cut down to 12-24 hours but agitated consumers are chiding the hapless new service providers for taking so long. Today our pizzas are getting delivered in 30 minutes, our bills are being collected from our doorsteps and the service brands are treating the consumer as a king. Yet we’re becoming more and more foul.
Clearly, we are seeing the emergence of an extremely intolerant breed of consumers who are forever threatening and bullying the service brands. While the choices available to the consumers and the service standards have improved in absolute terms the consumer’s behaviour towards the service brands has progressively deteriorated.
While due to the high degree of competition in all the service sectors the brands are stretching themselves to ‘delight the middle-class consumers’, the consumers are treating them with increased disdain. There seems to be developing almost an inverse relation between the efforts that the service brands are making to delight the consumer and the consumer respect towards the brands. As an outcome today even some of the international brands in areas such as financial services have started losing the global ‘halo’ that used to fetch them a premium. Therefore the brands need to worry. Not just because the consumer is getting irritated or behaving badly but their brand premium has started to get eroded.
What explains the sudden emergence of this rude consumer behaviour towards the service brands? Is this the revenge of the consumer?
After years of being treated shabbily he’s got the choice finally and therefore he is venting his built-up frustrations. But logic asks why he should be unhappy about getting what he wanted and more. The second hypothesis is about the intensity of competition in the market raising the consumer expectations every day to a level where he’s become insatiable and unhappy. Some may also suggest that the increased brand choice across all categories has made him a ‘spoilt child’ and hence his bully behaviour. But strangely in categories such as DTH where the choice isn’t much the consumer bad behaviour is already prevalent. And even if one was to believe the increased choice leading to unhappiness theory, what one can’t explain is the increasing bad behaviour or intolerance from the consumers in a culture which is seen as more tolerant and polite. This behaviour goes against the cultural grain of the generally polite and tolerant Indian middle class.
To be continued
(The writer is Vice-President & Strategic Planning Director, JWT Delhi. This paper won an award at the WPP Atticus Awards in the Branding & Identity category. The award recognises original published thinking in communications services)
The chances are that if you are in India you would be experiencing one or more of these things around you very frequently. And if you were an outsider you are most definitely likely to reach a conclusion that you’re perhaps seeing the reactions of consumers in market where they don’t have good service providers and/or the quality of service is fast deteriorating.
Now consider the reality. About 10 years ago, it used to take 15 days to three months to get a telephone installed at your residence. Today it takes less than 24 hours for an active landline connection and you can have an active mobile phone connection almost instantly. The approval time for a home loan has come down from months and weeks to 5-7 days. You can apply and get a credit card almost instantly. The time required to get cash from the bank has almost come to nil thanks to the technologies like ATMs compared to the half-day it took a while ago.
Now consider the brand choice equation. About 10 years ago there was one telecom service provider, one life insurance company and not more than 4-5 big banks to choose from. Today there are more than five telecom service brands ranging from the international giants such as Vodafone to homegrown biggie Airtel, Tata and Reliance to choose from. There are more than 10-12 insurance brands, almost all of them partnered by the world leaders. There are more than 20 banks to choose from – all of them armed with latest technologies to make your life easy. More than half-a-dozen airlines are ready to fly you through the day between different towns.
In light of this truth the above described aggressive behaviour by consumers clearly defies any logical deduction from reality. An even more intriguing aspect is the consumer behaviour before all this. Ten years ago, when the linesman from the State-owned BSNL came and installed the telephone after a month-and-a-half, most consumers very happily offered him sweets. That time has now been cut down to 12-24 hours but agitated consumers are chiding the hapless new service providers for taking so long. Today our pizzas are getting delivered in 30 minutes, our bills are being collected from our doorsteps and the service brands are treating the consumer as a king. Yet we’re becoming more and more foul.
Clearly, we are seeing the emergence of an extremely intolerant breed of consumers who are forever threatening and bullying the service brands. While the choices available to the consumers and the service standards have improved in absolute terms the consumer’s behaviour towards the service brands has progressively deteriorated.
While due to the high degree of competition in all the service sectors the brands are stretching themselves to ‘delight the middle-class consumers’, the consumers are treating them with increased disdain. There seems to be developing almost an inverse relation between the efforts that the service brands are making to delight the consumer and the consumer respect towards the brands. As an outcome today even some of the international brands in areas such as financial services have started losing the global ‘halo’ that used to fetch them a premium. Therefore the brands need to worry. Not just because the consumer is getting irritated or behaving badly but their brand premium has started to get eroded.
What explains the sudden emergence of this rude consumer behaviour towards the service brands? Is this the revenge of the consumer?
After years of being treated shabbily he’s got the choice finally and therefore he is venting his built-up frustrations. But logic asks why he should be unhappy about getting what he wanted and more. The second hypothesis is about the intensity of competition in the market raising the consumer expectations every day to a level where he’s become insatiable and unhappy. Some may also suggest that the increased brand choice across all categories has made him a ‘spoilt child’ and hence his bully behaviour. But strangely in categories such as DTH where the choice isn’t much the consumer bad behaviour is already prevalent. And even if one was to believe the increased choice leading to unhappiness theory, what one can’t explain is the increasing bad behaviour or intolerance from the consumers in a culture which is seen as more tolerant and polite. This behaviour goes against the cultural grain of the generally polite and tolerant Indian middle class.
To be continued
(The writer is Vice-President & Strategic Planning Director, JWT Delhi. This paper won an award at the WPP Atticus Awards in the Branding & Identity category. The award recognises original published thinking in communications services)
India -The Changing mindset of Billions
The mindset of India as a nation is changing. The emerging Indian mindset is finding its roots in the Kshatriya values of the traditional warrior class as against the Brahminical values of the priestly knowledge class that has been the biggest influe ncer of the Indian mindset so far. The new India has found a leaf within its cultural roots in the Kshatriya way of life which is putting an accent on the extrinsic values of action, success, winning, glory and heroism as against the Brahminical values of knowledge, adjustment, simplicity and restraint.
The India of today is seeking a ‘Karmic transformation’. Traditionally Indians have taken refuge in the idea of Karma and its interpretation that our life is governed by our fate hence not much can be done to change what’s writ. The new India is seeking to transform its Karma. The emerging belief is that Karma is shaped by your actions and it’s possible therefore to transform your being; to achieve a life that you desire rather than live the one that’s destined. This desire and belief of being able to change one’s destiny is the driving idea or the core value of the changing Indian mindset.
This larger cultural change is visible in the changing cultural codes. For instance, Indians today are no more content to sit back and wait for opportunity to strike. On the contrary they are going out and knocking on the doors of opportunity. Take, for example, a city like Bangalore, which is facing a genuine scarcity of chauffeurs. In general, the Southern states in India are more conversant with English as a language than, say, the Northern states. As such, most of the people who worked as chauffeurs in a city like Bangalore had some fluency in English as a language. And the boom in the services sector has meant that anyone who could speak some English and is open to working hard and get trained is sought after by the BPO industry. Many chauffeurs in Bangalore have joined the BPO industry at salaries four to five times higher than what they probably earned driving someone else’s car. Across strata and town class, Indians today are ‘activating their destinies’.
About a year ago, for the first time on national television, 60 million households (those with cable & satellite connections) in India collectively got exposed to a term called ‘X Factor’. ‘X Factor’ or more specifically the lack of it, was what the judges of the TV reality show Indian Idol used to decimate the chances of many talented singers, some with over 12 years of training in classical music. For the first time the Indian middle-class realised the importance of looking good, dancing well and being stage-friendly. They realised that 12 years of training in classical singing may not be enough to win a talent competition, but being able to perform like a rock star might be. For a Brahminical India, which valued talent over flair, substance over style and academics over personality, realising the importance of the so-called ‘X Factor’ marks a never-before shift in the mindset. The concept of ‘X Factor’ in many ways defines the code of ‘currency to extrinsic values’ that the new India is learning is a critical instrument to success.
Indians today are realising the criticality of pushing to the limits and closing the last lap, of not letting it go before the ‘finish’ line. There is a new sensibility emerging, which is recognising the criticality of the last lap.
The result is that while India has always done well in things cerebral such as chess championships and mathematics Olympiads, we are now beginning to get medals in intense sports such as tennis and athletics. In the year that went by, the entire world witnessed the dramatic takeover of the French steel company Arcelor by Mittal Steel, a company owned by an Indian though not operating out of India. The sheer perseverance with which Lakshmi Niwas Mittal approached the deal, making offers, aggressive counter offers, parlaying with the involved governments and stakeholders was a spectacle in the art of ‘last mile closure’.
The biggest fear in today’s Indian youth is being ordinary. Their desire is to be extraordinary in everything they do. Bunty Aur Babli that has been a blockbuster success across India has at the heart of its story, the desire of a young boy and a young girl from small town India to escape Fursatganj, symbolic of a small-thinking town, and make it big in the city of big dreams - Mumbai. The most defining moment of the movie is when the film’s protagonist refuses to go for a government clerk job interview, which his father has set up through reference. His refrain to his father is that the job that you have set up for me has neither recognition nor fun nor fame - the three critical parameters that the Indian youth uses to evaluate anything including a career. As the film sequence goes on to highlight – a set of values exactly opposite to the values of hard work, respect and honesty that his father lived by, spending more than two decades in the government job of a ticket collector for the Indian Railways. The safe-playing Indians who made efforts to blend in and be part of the social whole are today universally seeking opportunities that will make them stand out; bring them extraordinariness!
Evidently so, the newer mindset is rooted more in ‘action’ than the ‘knowledge’ orientation of the traditional Indian mindset. This change in the mindset of the new India is becoming the cultural engine of the Indian economic charge. Individual entropies of the young people are adding up to provide a larger momentum to the country on the whole. Considering that more than 500 million Indians are below the age of 21 years and its median age of 25 is even lower than that of China (33) that should make for quite a force.
(The writer is Vice President - Strategic Planning, Bates 141. This paper was presented by him at the Esomar Asia Pacific Conference 2007 at Kuala Lumpur and won the award in the Market Research and Insights category of the WPP Atticus Awards.)
The India of today is seeking a ‘Karmic transformation’. Traditionally Indians have taken refuge in the idea of Karma and its interpretation that our life is governed by our fate hence not much can be done to change what’s writ. The new India is seeking to transform its Karma. The emerging belief is that Karma is shaped by your actions and it’s possible therefore to transform your being; to achieve a life that you desire rather than live the one that’s destined. This desire and belief of being able to change one’s destiny is the driving idea or the core value of the changing Indian mindset.
This larger cultural change is visible in the changing cultural codes. For instance, Indians today are no more content to sit back and wait for opportunity to strike. On the contrary they are going out and knocking on the doors of opportunity. Take, for example, a city like Bangalore, which is facing a genuine scarcity of chauffeurs. In general, the Southern states in India are more conversant with English as a language than, say, the Northern states. As such, most of the people who worked as chauffeurs in a city like Bangalore had some fluency in English as a language. And the boom in the services sector has meant that anyone who could speak some English and is open to working hard and get trained is sought after by the BPO industry. Many chauffeurs in Bangalore have joined the BPO industry at salaries four to five times higher than what they probably earned driving someone else’s car. Across strata and town class, Indians today are ‘activating their destinies’.
About a year ago, for the first time on national television, 60 million households (those with cable & satellite connections) in India collectively got exposed to a term called ‘X Factor’. ‘X Factor’ or more specifically the lack of it, was what the judges of the TV reality show Indian Idol used to decimate the chances of many talented singers, some with over 12 years of training in classical music. For the first time the Indian middle-class realised the importance of looking good, dancing well and being stage-friendly. They realised that 12 years of training in classical singing may not be enough to win a talent competition, but being able to perform like a rock star might be. For a Brahminical India, which valued talent over flair, substance over style and academics over personality, realising the importance of the so-called ‘X Factor’ marks a never-before shift in the mindset. The concept of ‘X Factor’ in many ways defines the code of ‘currency to extrinsic values’ that the new India is learning is a critical instrument to success.
Indians today are realising the criticality of pushing to the limits and closing the last lap, of not letting it go before the ‘finish’ line. There is a new sensibility emerging, which is recognising the criticality of the last lap.
The result is that while India has always done well in things cerebral such as chess championships and mathematics Olympiads, we are now beginning to get medals in intense sports such as tennis and athletics. In the year that went by, the entire world witnessed the dramatic takeover of the French steel company Arcelor by Mittal Steel, a company owned by an Indian though not operating out of India. The sheer perseverance with which Lakshmi Niwas Mittal approached the deal, making offers, aggressive counter offers, parlaying with the involved governments and stakeholders was a spectacle in the art of ‘last mile closure’.
The biggest fear in today’s Indian youth is being ordinary. Their desire is to be extraordinary in everything they do. Bunty Aur Babli that has been a blockbuster success across India has at the heart of its story, the desire of a young boy and a young girl from small town India to escape Fursatganj, symbolic of a small-thinking town, and make it big in the city of big dreams - Mumbai. The most defining moment of the movie is when the film’s protagonist refuses to go for a government clerk job interview, which his father has set up through reference. His refrain to his father is that the job that you have set up for me has neither recognition nor fun nor fame - the three critical parameters that the Indian youth uses to evaluate anything including a career. As the film sequence goes on to highlight – a set of values exactly opposite to the values of hard work, respect and honesty that his father lived by, spending more than two decades in the government job of a ticket collector for the Indian Railways. The safe-playing Indians who made efforts to blend in and be part of the social whole are today universally seeking opportunities that will make them stand out; bring them extraordinariness!
Evidently so, the newer mindset is rooted more in ‘action’ than the ‘knowledge’ orientation of the traditional Indian mindset. This change in the mindset of the new India is becoming the cultural engine of the Indian economic charge. Individual entropies of the young people are adding up to provide a larger momentum to the country on the whole. Considering that more than 500 million Indians are below the age of 21 years and its median age of 25 is even lower than that of China (33) that should make for quite a force.
(The writer is Vice President - Strategic Planning, Bates 141. This paper was presented by him at the Esomar Asia Pacific Conference 2007 at Kuala Lumpur and won the award in the Market Research and Insights category of the WPP Atticus Awards.)
World - Columbia's Hostage Triumph
IT WAS an ending happier than any Hollywood director would dare to dream up. After years of captivity at the hands of left-wing FARC guerrillas, Ingrid Betancourt, three American defence contractors and 11 Colombian soldiers were rescued on Wednesday July 2nd by the army, without a shot being fired. It was a “miracle”, said Ms Betancourt, a former presidential candidate who holds French and Colombian nationality and who had been detained for more than six years, for much of that time in chains and in poor health. It was a triumph for Colombia’s president, Álvaro Uribe, who at some political cost had resisted pressure to negotiate the release of Ms Betancourt. And it was a disaster for the FARC and its sympathisers in Latin America who hoped to use the hostage issue to weaken Mr Uribe.
The rescue operation involved years of planning. It was testament to the army’s new sophistication in intelligence and infiltration. It built on its recent successes in disrupting the FARC’s communications and isolating its leaders. An attempt to rescue other guerrilla hostages in 2003 had ended in disaster, when a dozen were killed by their captors.
This time the army relied on trickery. A former hostage who escaped last year supplied details of the jungle camps in the remote south-eastern departments of Guaviare and Vaupés. Army intelligence agents, posing as senior FARC members, made contact with the guerrilla commander guarding the hostages. They gave him a false order purporting to be from the FARC’s new leader, Alfonso Cano, that the hostages were to be taken to two helicopters sent by a humanitarian organisation—mimicking the arrangements when five other captives were released earlier this year after mediation by Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez.
Once on board the helicopters, the two guerrilla escorts were overpowered and the army agents, dressed in Che Guevara T-shirts, broke the news to the hostages that they were flying to an army base and freedom. “We couldn’t believe it. The helicopter nearly fell because we jumped for joy,” said Ms Betancourt.
The operation is the latest of several devastating blows suffered this year by the FARC, which mixes an antiquated Marxism-Leninism with drug-trafficking and racketeering. In March, the army bombed a guerrilla camp just over the border in Ecuador, killing Raúl Reyes, a member of the group’s seven-man secretariat. The incident yielded a huge haul of documents from Mr Reyes’s computers. Days later another member of the secretariat was killed by his own bodyguard. Then Manuel Marulanda, the FARC’s founder and undisputed leader, died, supposedly of a heart attack.
The FARC still hold several hundred hostages, but they have lost their chief prizes. Ms Betancourt was a minor politician in Colombia when she was seized while campaigning for the presidency in 2002. But she has become a national cause célèbre in France, where she studied; she married a Frenchman and her two children live there. The three Americans, who were working on contract to the United States government, were captured when their anti-drug surveillance plane crashed in guerrilla territory in 2003.
The FARC claimed to want to swap its trophy hostages for jailed guerrillas. But e-mails from Mr Reyes’s computer, seen by TheEconomist, show that their real aim was to use them to embarrass Mr Uribe and to gain international recognition. They wanted the president to “demilitarise” a swathe of territory to allow talks. Mr Uribe was resolutely against that: during past peace talks the FARC used a similar enclave for recruiting and training while continuing to kill and kidnap.
The hostage release came in a week in which Mr Uribe was being widely criticised at home for appearing to blow up a conflict with Colombia’s judiciary in order to engineer the possibility of a third term. For months he has refused to rule out seeking another constitutional change that would allow him to stand again. His supporters have collected enough signatures for a referendum on this issue. The triumphant release of the hostages, coming on top of his other successes, means that if he indeed wants a third term, Mr Uribe may well be able to get it. But others have political ambitions too. One is Manuel Santos, who as defence minister had overseen those successes. Another is Ms Betancourt, who in freedom was quick to say she still aspires to the presidency. It would be even stranger than the movies if the three main protagonists in this week’s happy ending were to meet again in a sequel at the ballot box in two years’ time.
The rescue operation involved years of planning. It was testament to the army’s new sophistication in intelligence and infiltration. It built on its recent successes in disrupting the FARC’s communications and isolating its leaders. An attempt to rescue other guerrilla hostages in 2003 had ended in disaster, when a dozen were killed by their captors.
This time the army relied on trickery. A former hostage who escaped last year supplied details of the jungle camps in the remote south-eastern departments of Guaviare and Vaupés. Army intelligence agents, posing as senior FARC members, made contact with the guerrilla commander guarding the hostages. They gave him a false order purporting to be from the FARC’s new leader, Alfonso Cano, that the hostages were to be taken to two helicopters sent by a humanitarian organisation—mimicking the arrangements when five other captives were released earlier this year after mediation by Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez.
Once on board the helicopters, the two guerrilla escorts were overpowered and the army agents, dressed in Che Guevara T-shirts, broke the news to the hostages that they were flying to an army base and freedom. “We couldn’t believe it. The helicopter nearly fell because we jumped for joy,” said Ms Betancourt.
The operation is the latest of several devastating blows suffered this year by the FARC, which mixes an antiquated Marxism-Leninism with drug-trafficking and racketeering. In March, the army bombed a guerrilla camp just over the border in Ecuador, killing Raúl Reyes, a member of the group’s seven-man secretariat. The incident yielded a huge haul of documents from Mr Reyes’s computers. Days later another member of the secretariat was killed by his own bodyguard. Then Manuel Marulanda, the FARC’s founder and undisputed leader, died, supposedly of a heart attack.
The FARC still hold several hundred hostages, but they have lost their chief prizes. Ms Betancourt was a minor politician in Colombia when she was seized while campaigning for the presidency in 2002. But she has become a national cause célèbre in France, where she studied; she married a Frenchman and her two children live there. The three Americans, who were working on contract to the United States government, were captured when their anti-drug surveillance plane crashed in guerrilla territory in 2003.
The FARC claimed to want to swap its trophy hostages for jailed guerrillas. But e-mails from Mr Reyes’s computer, seen by TheEconomist, show that their real aim was to use them to embarrass Mr Uribe and to gain international recognition. They wanted the president to “demilitarise” a swathe of territory to allow talks. Mr Uribe was resolutely against that: during past peace talks the FARC used a similar enclave for recruiting and training while continuing to kill and kidnap.
The hostage release came in a week in which Mr Uribe was being widely criticised at home for appearing to blow up a conflict with Colombia’s judiciary in order to engineer the possibility of a third term. For months he has refused to rule out seeking another constitutional change that would allow him to stand again. His supporters have collected enough signatures for a referendum on this issue. The triumphant release of the hostages, coming on top of his other successes, means that if he indeed wants a third term, Mr Uribe may well be able to get it. But others have political ambitions too. One is Manuel Santos, who as defence minister had overseen those successes. Another is Ms Betancourt, who in freedom was quick to say she still aspires to the presidency. It would be even stranger than the movies if the three main protagonists in this week’s happy ending were to meet again in a sequel at the ballot box in two years’ time.
Entertainment - Asian Invasion - Gaming
FOR millions of East Asians, online gaming is not so much a hobby as a way of life. “Massively multiplayer” online games such as "Legend of MIR 3” and “Maple Story” have legions of devoted fans who spend an alarming proportion of their waking hours sitting in front of their PCs, at home or in internet cafés, doing battle with elves, wizards and mythological beasts. Some players take their parallel gaming lives very seriously: one man murdered a friend in a dispute over a stolen virtual sword.
Many of these games rely on a business model that is different from the way the video-games industry works in the West. Rather than selling games as shrink-wrapped retail products which can then be played on a PC or games console, the Asian industry often gives away the software as a free download and lets users play for nothing. Revenue comes instead from small payments made by more avid players to buy extras for their in-game characters, from weapons to haircuts. In this way, a minority of paying customers subsidise the game for everyone else.
Now this model is being applied outside Asia. Electronic Arts (EA), a giant American video-games publisher, is preparing to release “Battlefield Heroes” (pictured), an online combat game with a slapstick sense of humour. It will be a free download but will, the company hopes, make money from both in-game advertising and the sale of character upgrades. Sean Decker of DICE, the EA subsidiary responsible for the game, says the game’s website is already attracting 60,000 visits per day, which bodes well for its launch later this summer.
PlayFirst, a publisher of “casual” games based in San Francisco, is already making a success of the micropayment model. “Diner Dash - Home Town Hero”, a game that involves running a chain of restaurants, allows players to buy extra levels, clothing and decorations online. John Welch, PlayFirst’s boss, says sales of such items now account for 10% of the company’s revenue.
Micropayments are already proving successful in the field of social networking, notes Piers Harding-Rolls of Screen Digest, a consultancy. He points out that Habbo—a self-styled “hangout for teens” that takes the form of a virtual hotel, and operates in 31 countries—generates the lion’s share of its revenue ($66m last year) from sales of virtual clothing, furniture and accessories.
For games, the Asian model has many benefits. It lowers the barrier to entry for new players by allowing people to play games without having to pay anything. And since the game’s software is usually given away, there is no need to worry about piracy—indeed, the more a game is copied and passed around, the better. Given the huge cost of developing the most advanced video games, however, the new model seems unlikely to push aside the traditional model of selling games on disc (or as paid downloads) any time soon. But as gaming reaches out to new audiences, there may be more scope for new business models based on advertising and micropayments.
Many of these games rely on a business model that is different from the way the video-games industry works in the West. Rather than selling games as shrink-wrapped retail products which can then be played on a PC or games console, the Asian industry often gives away the software as a free download and lets users play for nothing. Revenue comes instead from small payments made by more avid players to buy extras for their in-game characters, from weapons to haircuts. In this way, a minority of paying customers subsidise the game for everyone else.
Now this model is being applied outside Asia. Electronic Arts (EA), a giant American video-games publisher, is preparing to release “Battlefield Heroes” (pictured), an online combat game with a slapstick sense of humour. It will be a free download but will, the company hopes, make money from both in-game advertising and the sale of character upgrades. Sean Decker of DICE, the EA subsidiary responsible for the game, says the game’s website is already attracting 60,000 visits per day, which bodes well for its launch later this summer.
PlayFirst, a publisher of “casual” games based in San Francisco, is already making a success of the micropayment model. “Diner Dash - Home Town Hero”, a game that involves running a chain of restaurants, allows players to buy extra levels, clothing and decorations online. John Welch, PlayFirst’s boss, says sales of such items now account for 10% of the company’s revenue.
Micropayments are already proving successful in the field of social networking, notes Piers Harding-Rolls of Screen Digest, a consultancy. He points out that Habbo—a self-styled “hangout for teens” that takes the form of a virtual hotel, and operates in 31 countries—generates the lion’s share of its revenue ($66m last year) from sales of virtual clothing, furniture and accessories.
For games, the Asian model has many benefits. It lowers the barrier to entry for new players by allowing people to play games without having to pay anything. And since the game’s software is usually given away, there is no need to worry about piracy—indeed, the more a game is copied and passed around, the better. Given the huge cost of developing the most advanced video games, however, the new model seems unlikely to push aside the traditional model of selling games on disc (or as paid downloads) any time soon. But as gaming reaches out to new audiences, there may be more scope for new business models based on advertising and micropayments.
Entertainment - Balaji forays into non-fiction
The firebrand fiction factory, Balaji Telefilms, is foraying into non-fiction. The production house’s non-fiction division is ready to roll out two reality shows in the next few days. There’s a talent hunt reality show, Lux Kaun Jeetega Bollywood Ka Ticket, on 9X and Kabhi Kabhii Pyaar Kabhi Kabhii Yaar on Sony Entertainment Television (SET). While the show on 9X is a reality talent hunt to find Bollywood’s next superstar couple, the one on Sony is a celebrity dance show. Jordy Patel, head, non-fiction, Balaji, says more projects are in the pipeline. Kabhi Kabhii Pyaar Kabhi Kabhii Yaar will feature 21 celebrities. Seven contestants will dance with their real as well as reel partners. The judges and the studio audience will vote for the pair (real or reel) which has the most chemistry. The show will be aired twice a week for seven weeks. The duration of each episode will be one hour.
Balaji and Sony believe that the show will be a novel concept in the clutter of dance reality shows. Patel is confident that the show will have a ‘Balaji touch’ to it. “The show will definitely be high on production quality, be it light, sound or stage. There will be the requisite twists and turns,” he says. He adds that the show’s concept has a “mean and naughty” aspect to it, as the celebrities will be judged on their sizzle quotient with the real and reel partners. The judges are filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt, choreographer Ganesh Hegde and actor Sameera Reddy. Albert Almeida, executive vice-president and business head, SET India, believes that it is the ‘Pati, Patni Aur Woh’ concept that will draw in the audience. In a show of this scale, the channel has decided to do away with audience voting. Almeida provides a rationale, saying, “In shows involving celebrities, the audience is not very keen on voting as the perception is that the participating celebrity doesn’t need his/ her vote to win.” He claims that the voting is higher for shows such as Indian Idol. The short play-out time of the show is another reason for eliminating audience voting. The promos for the show will start today onwards on television, outdoor, radio and press. There are two TV commercials, which have been designed along the lines of Bollywood movies. “We have taken two popular Bollywood romantic numbers and featured the couple and the other person in it. Since the songs are both visually and aurally memorable, it will create interest,” says Danish Khan, assistant vice-president, marketing, SET India. With Dus Ka Dum becoming the channel’s trump card to get back in the reckoning, this show could be another booster. The other Balaji show will launch on 9X on July 6. The non-fiction and events division of Balaji Telefilms is a joint venture with actor Suneil Shetty’s venture, Popcorn Entertainment.For the financial year 2006-07, Balaji Telefilms’ turnover was Rs 317 crore, out of which Rs 293 crore came in from Hindi programming – which is mostly fiction and family drama. The Hindi content which adds up to more than 1000 hours of programming were aired on the major GEC channels of the country. Balaji also produces content for Doordarshan and other southern India channels such as Gemini TV, Udaya TV, Surya TV, Sun TV and Doordarshan. From the southern India channels, the company generates a revenue of Rs 24 crore and 670 hours of programming.This also implies there is a huge gap between the price that Balaji commands for Hindi content vis-à-vis other languages. For Hindi programming it commands around Rs 27 lakh for an hour of content, while for other southern Indian languages, it revenue per hour of programming is only around Rs 3.6 lakh.
Lifestyle - The Vanishing Point
Astrologers and their ilk have been effectively emasculated in the United Kingdom. As of last month when new consumer protection regulations came into force, they can be taken to court and fined or even put in jail if their various predictions of love, good fortune, etc, don't materialise. They are also required to state their services are for "entertainment only" and not "experimentally proven". The disclaimers have to be put on boards outside, printed on invoices and posted on their websites. Apparently, the Asian community has been particularly vulnerable to the influence of the psychic mafia while the spiritual industry, consisting of UK-based astrologers and visiting babas from India, earn £40 million every year. Therefore, perhaps it's time now the British government also came down on yet another Asian dominated industry whose entertainment value may be debatable but whose claims have not been experimentally proven either. That's homeopathy. There are many reasons why homeopathy can't work but here's the simplest. Samuel Hahnemann, who formulated the system, believed that diseases represented disturbances in the body's ability to heal itself and that only a small stimulus was needed to begin the healing process. In fact, the smaller the stimulus, the better. Meaning, the more diluted the drug, the more effective it would be — a principle he called "the law of infinitesimals". So the way a homeopathic drug is prepared is, if the substance is soluble, one part of it is diluted with either 9 or 99 parts of water or alcohol and shaken vigorously. Then, to make it more potent, one part of that diluted solution is taken and diluted again with 9 or 99 parts of water or alcohol. Then again one part of that doubly diluted solution is taken and dittoed through the same process. And again and again and again to make it more and more and more effective. Dilutions of 1 to 10 are designated by the Roman numeral X (for example, 1X = 1/10; 2X = 1/100; 3X = 1/1,000; 4X = 1/1,000,000; etc) and dilutions of 1 to 100 are designated by the Roman numeral C (1C = 1/100; 2C = 1/10,000; 3C = 1,000,000; etc). By an amazing coincidence, the year 1811, when Hahnemann published his catalogue of homeopathic drugs, also saw the Italian physicist, Amedeo Avogadro, publish his famous Avogadro's Law. The law itself needn't bother anyone except chemists but it does have a consequence called "Avogadro's number" which indicates the limit to which a dilution can be made without losing the original substance altogether. That is, one can keep diluting and diluting the drug and all that happens is one keeps getting more and more water or alcohol in the mixture instead of the drug till a point comes (the Avogadro number) when there's not even a molecule of the drug left in it. This happens at dilutions of approximately 12C or 24X which, as any homeopath worth his sugar can vouch for, is a fairly moderate dose. In fact, so is 30C, which is arrived at by first diluting the drug to a hundredth part and then repeating the process 30 times. It's about the same as taking a grain of a substance and dissolving it in millions of spheres of water, each equal to the diameter of the entire solar system. Or as one wag put it: "That's comparable to dipping your car key in a river, going some hundred miles downstream, taking a few drops of water out of the river, and then using it to start your vehicle." Hahnemann, however, was not a fool. He also realised that diluting a dye, for instance, doesn't result in a deeper hue, just like adding less sugar doesn't make the coffee sweeter. But he had a way out. His theory was that all that shaking at every stage of the dilution left behind a "spirit-like" essence that cured by reviving the body's "vital force". Giving, as it were, the patient at least a ghost of a chance of getting better. Which, besides invoking the placebo effect, is all that homeopathy does
Business - Vidoes take travel to new marketing heights
In India, an estimated 11% of total travel bookings take place online. The figure is expected to rise to 25% by 2010, indicating a huge opportunity for online marketing.Travel portals and hotel chains, till date, have been providing 360 degree virtual tours, audio tours and photographs, apart from text reviews. Such reviews, however, often do not fully capture the look, feel and vibes of a place or a hotel. Sensing this lacuna, they are now going a step further — marketing the concept through videos, video reviews and video blogs — either put up by themselves or travellers on the travel agency portal or any other social media video platform like YouTube and AOL Video. All big global chains routinely upload videos of their interiors, etc., on their websites. Indian travel portals and hotel chains too are beginning to follow in the footsteps, but only a handful of them have a video section. A case in point is that of Cleartrip.com which introduced ‘Cleartrip Videos' this May. The section features short videos created by amateur filmmakers who participated in the Short Flicks festival organised by Cleartrip in France. The videos showcase favourite restaurants, places and quaint facts. Vikas Jawa, director, Zoomtra.com, an India-based travel search engine,concurs: "Hotel videos or videos of tourist attractions are popular choices of viewing. Global studies suggest that pictorial/video representations are rated as high as the second- most important factor in making a hotel decision only after the written description of the hotel (barring price and location)." Two-thirds of online adult leisure travellers in the US consume online video and audio clips, notes a recent research by The Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International. Experts from the travel industry note that the largest category posting or viewing video content is between 18 and 29 years old, meaning leisure travellers are most likely to buy value products, unlike business travellers. Nikhil Rungta, marketing chief, Yatra.com, says: "As people are becoming comfortable with online booking, marketing through videos will gain momentum. Videos might not generate the compulsive feeling to buy a product, but definitely help the buyer in making a choice between various options on his mind." Yatra has a separate review site Raahi.com on which it has put hotel and travel videos and will enable uploading and downloading for users in a few months time. Galileo, a US-based global travel and technology distribution company too — following the success of its Galileo PodCast programme launched in a move to reach to its target audience in India this June — plans to launch a Video PodCast by the year-end. Travellers who post their video reviews on these sites and travel portals too benefit. For instance, www.tripr.tv (a global video portal) allows travel enthusiasts to publish video reviews of hotels and when a video results in a booking, the traveller receives a commission fee. "The travel industry is also using social media monitoring solutions, which reviews blog sites, video-sharing sites, and opinion forums. As such solutions gain traction, this may be one of the more effective ways to approach social search marketing for travel industry in general," explains Jaideep Ghosh, director, KPMG Advisory Services. He notes, though, that trends in India are slightly different. Travel portals here are establishing physical retail outlets to complement their online presence. For instance, Yatra.com has complemented its online reach to larger user base through its own yatra-lounges and tie ups with telecom retail and cybercafes such as Reliance Communications outlets, Sify i-way and Hughes NetFusion and even through mobile phone applications. This, he notes, is to capture a larger portion of potential user groups, as well as to achieve higher conversion rate. He points out that even internationally, browsing of travel portals versus actual sales is roughly in the ratio 2:1.
Business - Mobile users Vishing for trouble
With India adding almost 8 million cellphone subscribers per month - and SMS being the largest-used service - hackers find vishing a great tool to target gullible users.Rakshita Kolaskar (name changed) was pleasantly surprised to receive a SMS recently, announcing her as the winner of a $3 million (around Rs 12.5 crore) prize from the Shell International Mobile Draw. The message prompted her to mail her claim and asked her to call an international number. However, when her excitement died, she tried hard to recall if she ever used any Shell product or service, as the SMS stated. She soon realised that she had never done so. So why was this SMS sent, especially, when a Shell official confirmed that it had not issued any such award? Welcome to the world of Vishing or voice phishing, wherein hackers are using a combination of voice over internet protocol (VoIP), SMSs and the internet to fool and redirect users into dialling a phone number and collect critical information for financial gain. In Kolaskar's case, both mobile spam and vishing were used. Phishing-related losses have been estimated at $2.8 billion with a single victim losing $1,244 in 2006, compared with $257 in 2005, according to Gartner. According to some recent reports, phishing attacks on banks have increased since the beginning of the year. Globally, the first vishing attack was registered in 2006, but there have been reports that these are increasing. Earlier this year, the FBI's internet Crime Centre said it received multiple reports on different variations of vishing. These attacks against US financial institutes and individual users continue to rise. Many feel that India is a compelling market for this kind of an attack. With almost 8 million subscribers added per month —and SMS the largest-used service —experts feel this could be the best way to target Indian users. Rohas Nagpal, president, Asian School of Cyberlaw, feels that the above is an social engineering attack could be later used for a fraudulent activity or it could also be the first step towards vishing. Security experts are of the opinion that more than the technology solutions, it is the ease of database availability from the telecom operators that is responsible for this in India. "If you go to Nehru place in New Delhi, you can get a mobile number database for a few thousands of rupees," says a security specialist. Many feel that laws should be strengthened. Kartik Shahani, regional director, India, McAfee, says: "Everyone knows that databases are sold by network operators. One can also specify the type of database based on a user's ARPU spend. Besides, the rules and regulations on providing database access to other users are very weak in India." He also believes that if the attack is taking place from the net, then there are solutions that can help users detect the authentic site. But in case of vishing, it becomes difficult. Howard Schmidt, president and CEO, R&H Security Consulting and a former special advisor for cyberspace security for the White House, had told Business Standard that with the mobile usage increasing, the next wave of security threats will target handhelds. He said: "Five years from now, the mobile will be used like we use PC and laptops today. So, the attacks will be using the data on the handheld. The problem is that while solutions are available people are not using it." Niraj Kaushik, country manager, India and Saarc, Trend Micro, cautions that though vishing is still at a nascent stage, very few operators are providing any security solutions that can control spam on mobile handsets. The Nigerian scam Phishing is a common phenomeon on the internet. It is a form of internet fraud that aims to steal valuable information such as credit card details, social security numbers, user IDs and passwords for financial gains. Several top banks in India have reportedly been hit by phishing. A popular email scam is the Nigerian scam. The email, in this case, is sent by a prominent official from an African country asking the recepient to help him/her in depositing money into a local bank and also offers to share the bounty
Business - Mobile reach to triple in 4 years
Mobile reach to triple in 4 years: Gartner ( July '3,2008, Hindu Business Line)
India would have more than 737 million mobile connections by 2012 and revenues from cellular services will exceed $37 billion by then.In the next four years, cellular market penetration would increase to 60.7 per cent from 19.8 per cent last year, according to a study by research firm Gartner Inc.“The growth in the mobile subscriber base is on the back of a rapidly proliferating rural market, lower handset costs, and low tariff rates in the Indian market,” said Mr Madhusudan Gupta, Senior Research Analyst, Gartner. With 14 telecom service operators already present and another two set to join, the Indian telecom industry is expected to see some level of merger and acquisition activity in 2009. Given the high level of competition and anticipated consolidation, different business models will emerge that could push tariffs further down, with Indian mobile service consumers set to emerge as the biggest beneficiaries, said Mr Gupta.Vendors will continue to focus on handsets cheaper than $25 (Rs 1075) to capture market share, the report said. At the end of April, the number of mobile connections in India reached 264.19 million, depicting a three per cent month- on-month rise.The Indian mobile connection market continues to be dominated by pre-paid subscribers. Pre-paid connections accounted for more than 89 percent of all mobile connections in 2007 and are expected to grow to more than 92 percent of the connection base by 2012. The total services revenue for pre-paid connections is expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 18.9 per cent till 2012.The pre-paid subscriber base will cross 683 million and post-paid s base will exceed 53 million subscribers. The churn rate or the rate at which customers switch to competing cellular firms in India is 41 per cent currently; despite a maturing market the ratio is expected to go up to 49 per-cent in 2012.Moreover, with the increased growth in data services, the percentage of revenues coming from voice will reduce from 89 per cent in 2007 to 85 per cent in 2012.With 14 telecom service operators already present and another two set to join, the Indian telecom industry is expected to see some level of merger and acquisition activity in 2009. Given the high level of competition and anticipated consolidation, different business models will emerge that could push tariffs further down, with Indian mobile service consumers set to emerge as the biggest beneficiaries, said Mr Gupta.
India would have more than 737 million mobile connections by 2012 and revenues from cellular services will exceed $37 billion by then.In the next four years, cellular market penetration would increase to 60.7 per cent from 19.8 per cent last year, according to a study by research firm Gartner Inc.“The growth in the mobile subscriber base is on the back of a rapidly proliferating rural market, lower handset costs, and low tariff rates in the Indian market,” said Mr Madhusudan Gupta, Senior Research Analyst, Gartner. With 14 telecom service operators already present and another two set to join, the Indian telecom industry is expected to see some level of merger and acquisition activity in 2009. Given the high level of competition and anticipated consolidation, different business models will emerge that could push tariffs further down, with Indian mobile service consumers set to emerge as the biggest beneficiaries, said Mr Gupta.Vendors will continue to focus on handsets cheaper than $25 (Rs 1075) to capture market share, the report said. At the end of April, the number of mobile connections in India reached 264.19 million, depicting a three per cent month- on-month rise.The Indian mobile connection market continues to be dominated by pre-paid subscribers. Pre-paid connections accounted for more than 89 percent of all mobile connections in 2007 and are expected to grow to more than 92 percent of the connection base by 2012. The total services revenue for pre-paid connections is expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 18.9 per cent till 2012.The pre-paid subscriber base will cross 683 million and post-paid s base will exceed 53 million subscribers. The churn rate or the rate at which customers switch to competing cellular firms in India is 41 per cent currently; despite a maturing market the ratio is expected to go up to 49 per-cent in 2012.Moreover, with the increased growth in data services, the percentage of revenues coming from voice will reduce from 89 per cent in 2007 to 85 per cent in 2012.With 14 telecom service operators already present and another two set to join, the Indian telecom industry is expected to see some level of merger and acquisition activity in 2009. Given the high level of competition and anticipated consolidation, different business models will emerge that could push tariffs further down, with Indian mobile service consumers set to emerge as the biggest beneficiaries, said Mr Gupta.
Business - Ban on hoardings in Chennai aftereffects
For several hoarding owners in Chennai all hell broke loose on April 9, 2008 when the Supreme Court upheld the Madras High Court’s order banning unauthorised and hazardously positioned hoardings in Chennai. The Supreme Court upholding the Madras High Court’s order not only shocked the hoarding owners but also the entire advertising fraternity and left many in doldrums. This has also resulted in employees of several unorganised and small time players losing their jobs, while some big agencies either shunted off their employees to other divisions or transferred them to other cities.
With the ban on hoardings, the advertisers are left with few options, and the result is that prices of other out-of-home mediums such as road medians, bus panels and bus shelters have soared. Diamond Publicity, a Chennai-based OOH agency, has acquired 1,000 buses plying in Chennai for the rental cost of Rs 5,000 per bus. Earlier, the rental for each bus was around Rs 1,500 per bus every month. Diamond Publicity has taken the buses for the period of three years.
Similarly, road medians, which used to cost Rs 3,500 per month, is now rented out at Rs 12,000 and upwards. The Corporation has already floated a tender for 500 bus shelters in Chennai, which will be allotted to the highest bidder under build, operate and transfer (BOT) model. According to an industry source, the cost for building the bus shelters would alone cost more than Rs 75 crore. The duration of the winning bidder owning the bus shelters has also been reduced to eight years from 12 years which, according to a Corporation sources, was the collective decision of the Corporation.
Originally, the tender for bus shelters was floated in February 2008, and Big Street had won the bid by paying a whopping Rs 14 crore. However, after the ban on hoardings, the tender was called off and the Corporation floated a fresh tender on June 27, 2008, in which some of the national players, including Big Street, are participating.
According to a source from Chennai Corporation, the Corporation expects a higher bid this time as there are no hoardings in the city. An industry source said that the bid might even touch Rs 50 crore this time. Amidst all this, some of the OOH players this reporter spoke to said that the ban on hoardings was a huge setback and had hit the livelihoods of many. However, there were others who were optimistic about the hoardings returning to Chennai.
“There is no ban on hoardings in Chennai. This is a Government move to regularise the industry, which will only help stabilise the industry,” said Sridharan, Vice-President, Diamond Publicity. He hopes the hoardings would be back in Chennai in a much more organised manner.
Willis D’monte, Director-Operations, Big Street, felt that the ban on hoardings in Chennai would not affect their business plans as their focus was on street furniture and transit medium. “We will participate in tenders wherever it is viable and has revenue potential. Hoardings will come back, but I cannot say when,” he added.
The players in Chennai believe that hoardings would be back, but when is a question nobody has an answer to.
With the ban on hoardings, the advertisers are left with few options, and the result is that prices of other out-of-home mediums such as road medians, bus panels and bus shelters have soared. Diamond Publicity, a Chennai-based OOH agency, has acquired 1,000 buses plying in Chennai for the rental cost of Rs 5,000 per bus. Earlier, the rental for each bus was around Rs 1,500 per bus every month. Diamond Publicity has taken the buses for the period of three years.
Similarly, road medians, which used to cost Rs 3,500 per month, is now rented out at Rs 12,000 and upwards. The Corporation has already floated a tender for 500 bus shelters in Chennai, which will be allotted to the highest bidder under build, operate and transfer (BOT) model. According to an industry source, the cost for building the bus shelters would alone cost more than Rs 75 crore. The duration of the winning bidder owning the bus shelters has also been reduced to eight years from 12 years which, according to a Corporation sources, was the collective decision of the Corporation.
Originally, the tender for bus shelters was floated in February 2008, and Big Street had won the bid by paying a whopping Rs 14 crore. However, after the ban on hoardings, the tender was called off and the Corporation floated a fresh tender on June 27, 2008, in which some of the national players, including Big Street, are participating.
According to a source from Chennai Corporation, the Corporation expects a higher bid this time as there are no hoardings in the city. An industry source said that the bid might even touch Rs 50 crore this time. Amidst all this, some of the OOH players this reporter spoke to said that the ban on hoardings was a huge setback and had hit the livelihoods of many. However, there were others who were optimistic about the hoardings returning to Chennai.
“There is no ban on hoardings in Chennai. This is a Government move to regularise the industry, which will only help stabilise the industry,” said Sridharan, Vice-President, Diamond Publicity. He hopes the hoardings would be back in Chennai in a much more organised manner.
Willis D’monte, Director-Operations, Big Street, felt that the ban on hoardings in Chennai would not affect their business plans as their focus was on street furniture and transit medium. “We will participate in tenders wherever it is viable and has revenue potential. Hoardings will come back, but I cannot say when,” he added.
The players in Chennai believe that hoardings would be back, but when is a question nobody has an answer to.
Entertainment - Viacom Colors coming - July 21
Viacom 18 Media Pvt Ltd is all set to launch its Hindi GEC Colors on July 21 at 7.00 pm. Colors on Wednesday unveiled its power-packed line-up of eight new shows showcasing an entire spectrum of emotions. Viacom 18 Media is a joint venture between Viacom Inc and Network18.
Announcing the launch, Rajesh Kamat, CEO, Colors, said, “I am delighted to announce that as planned, Colors will beam into millions of Indian television screens on July 21 from 7:00 pm onwards. Our differentiated content, coupled with disruptive scheduling and peppered with some of the biggest blockbuster Hindi movies, will help us deliver on our promise of ‘cohesive viewing’. The wide spectrum of emotions covered in our programming offers something for everyone and everything for some. We are confident that every household in India will have some member or the other watching Colors between 7 pm and 11 pm to begin.”
He further said, “Advertisers are responding very well, and further, we will see an array of advertiser on the channel.” He added that the ad rates would vary from show to show.
Colors has partnered with the country’s leading production houses for different shows. The channel’s production partners include Endemol India for ‘Fear Factor – Khatron Ke Khiladi’, Meenakshi Sagar Productions for ‘Jai Shri Krishna’, Shakuntalam Telefilms for ‘Bandhan Saath Janmon Ka’, Playtime Creations for ‘Jeevan Saathi’, Sphere Origins for ‘Balika Vadhu - Kacchi Umar Ke Pakke Rishtey’, Jay Pranlal Mehta for ‘Rahe Tera Aashirwad’, Wizcraft Television for ‘Sajid’s Superstars’, and Deepti Bhatnagar Productions for ‘Mohe Rang De’.
Commenting on the programme line-up, Ashvini Yardi, Programming Head, Colors, said, “We have partnered with industry heavyweights and the finest production houses of the country to showcase a line-up that is contemporary, fresh and with a universal appeal. Through our basket of shows, Colors will also present to Indian TV viewers some of the most exciting new talent. One of the highlights of most of our shows is the music that boasts of title tracks composed and sung by Bollywood’s most renowned names like Alka Yagnik, Anand Raj Anand, Neeraj Shridhar, Suresh Wadekar, Mahalaxmi Iyer, and Shreya Goshal, among many others.”
Colors also announced its acquisition of some of the latest Bollywood blockbusters like ‘Om Shanti Om’, ‘Heyy Baby’, ‘Bhootnath, ‘One Two Three’, ‘Dus Kahaaniya’, and the soon to be launched ‘Singh Is King’.
Speaking on the marketing campaign, Kamat said, “Colors’ launch would be aggressively supported by a 360-degree marketing campaign that would showcase ‘scale’ and ‘innovation’. Starting first week of July, Colors will be omnipresent across multiple platforms.” He further said that the channel would be available through all possible channels such as cable, DTH, etc.
The programming line-up on Colors includes fiction-based social family dramas, chat shows, action reality shows, and blockbuster Hindi movies. From Monday to Friday the family dramas include ‘Rahe Tera Ashirwaad’ (at 7 pm), ‘Bandhan Saat Janmon Ka’ (at 7:30 pm), ‘Balika Vadhu-Kacchi Umar Ke Pakke Rishte’ (at 8 pm), ‘Jai Shri Krishna’ (at 8:30 pm); from Monday to Thursday, ‘Jeevan Saathi’ (at 9 pm) and ‘Mohe Rang De’ (at 9:30 pm). Reality show ‘Fear Factor - Khatron Ke Khiladi’ will air Monday to Thursday at 10 pm, while another reality show ‘Sajid’s Superstars’ would be aired on Saturdays at 10 pm. The blockbuster movies would be aired on Sundays, 4 pm onwards.
Announcing the launch, Rajesh Kamat, CEO, Colors, said, “I am delighted to announce that as planned, Colors will beam into millions of Indian television screens on July 21 from 7:00 pm onwards. Our differentiated content, coupled with disruptive scheduling and peppered with some of the biggest blockbuster Hindi movies, will help us deliver on our promise of ‘cohesive viewing’. The wide spectrum of emotions covered in our programming offers something for everyone and everything for some. We are confident that every household in India will have some member or the other watching Colors between 7 pm and 11 pm to begin.”
He further said, “Advertisers are responding very well, and further, we will see an array of advertiser on the channel.” He added that the ad rates would vary from show to show.
Colors has partnered with the country’s leading production houses for different shows. The channel’s production partners include Endemol India for ‘Fear Factor – Khatron Ke Khiladi’, Meenakshi Sagar Productions for ‘Jai Shri Krishna’, Shakuntalam Telefilms for ‘Bandhan Saath Janmon Ka’, Playtime Creations for ‘Jeevan Saathi’, Sphere Origins for ‘Balika Vadhu - Kacchi Umar Ke Pakke Rishtey’, Jay Pranlal Mehta for ‘Rahe Tera Aashirwad’, Wizcraft Television for ‘Sajid’s Superstars’, and Deepti Bhatnagar Productions for ‘Mohe Rang De’.
Commenting on the programme line-up, Ashvini Yardi, Programming Head, Colors, said, “We have partnered with industry heavyweights and the finest production houses of the country to showcase a line-up that is contemporary, fresh and with a universal appeal. Through our basket of shows, Colors will also present to Indian TV viewers some of the most exciting new talent. One of the highlights of most of our shows is the music that boasts of title tracks composed and sung by Bollywood’s most renowned names like Alka Yagnik, Anand Raj Anand, Neeraj Shridhar, Suresh Wadekar, Mahalaxmi Iyer, and Shreya Goshal, among many others.”
Colors also announced its acquisition of some of the latest Bollywood blockbusters like ‘Om Shanti Om’, ‘Heyy Baby’, ‘Bhootnath, ‘One Two Three’, ‘Dus Kahaaniya’, and the soon to be launched ‘Singh Is King’.
Speaking on the marketing campaign, Kamat said, “Colors’ launch would be aggressively supported by a 360-degree marketing campaign that would showcase ‘scale’ and ‘innovation’. Starting first week of July, Colors will be omnipresent across multiple platforms.” He further said that the channel would be available through all possible channels such as cable, DTH, etc.
The programming line-up on Colors includes fiction-based social family dramas, chat shows, action reality shows, and blockbuster Hindi movies. From Monday to Friday the family dramas include ‘Rahe Tera Ashirwaad’ (at 7 pm), ‘Bandhan Saat Janmon Ka’ (at 7:30 pm), ‘Balika Vadhu-Kacchi Umar Ke Pakke Rishte’ (at 8 pm), ‘Jai Shri Krishna’ (at 8:30 pm); from Monday to Thursday, ‘Jeevan Saathi’ (at 9 pm) and ‘Mohe Rang De’ (at 9:30 pm). Reality show ‘Fear Factor - Khatron Ke Khiladi’ will air Monday to Thursday at 10 pm, while another reality show ‘Sajid’s Superstars’ would be aired on Saturdays at 10 pm. The blockbuster movies would be aired on Sundays, 4 pm onwards.
Business - Window Ads in Cyber Cafes
Ideacts opens a new window for ads in cyber cafés ( July '3,2008, DNA)
Here’s a bit of interesting fact on the burgeoning internet market: l A whopping 36% of India’s total internet usage is through cyber cafes that have mushroomed in every nook and corner of the country l Almost 1 lakh cyber cafes are run by independent entities l Currently, there are only two organised players in this space — Sify iway and Reliance WebworldThese facts are not mere internet trivia, but a significant set of numbers on the cyber cafe business that has got Ideacts Innovation ticking. This Bangalore-based technology start-up has found a great opportunity for advertisers in this largely unorganised sector. The company has developed a novel application by which marketers can run ads on a custom interface that would substitute the conventional desktop in these cyber cafés. Ideacts Innovation says it has received a first-round funding worth $5 million from the US-based venture fund Sequoia Capital for its venture. The company, in fact, has already signed up 625 cafés totalling more than 5,000 terminals in eight cities. It is targeting 3,500 cafés with close to 30,000 terminals this year. It would install the software and market the platform with advertisers. In return, the cafés would get a share of the revenues as well as technical support. Rudrajeet Desai, co-founder and CEO, Ideacts Innovations, said, “We currently have a revenue-sharing model with the cyber cafés. Besides this, there is also a fixed payment made to these cafés. We have had about 75 campaigns from different brands trying out this system. Large advertisers, including such as Cadburys, Perfetti, Pepsi and Google are already using our platform.” The platform entails more than three-fourth of the screen space reserved for ads with the rest being used for links to internet tools. Detailing its reasons for investing in the firm, R Ramaraj, senior advisor, Sequoia Capital, said, “One way to look at the venture is the number of screens that could be available. In one lakh cyber cafes, there could be at least one million screens available for advertisers.” The firm has funded the likes of Yahoo, Google, Cisco Systems, Oracle and Apple and Youtube. In India, it has invested over $1.2 billion in various ventures
Here’s a bit of interesting fact on the burgeoning internet market: l A whopping 36% of India’s total internet usage is through cyber cafes that have mushroomed in every nook and corner of the country l Almost 1 lakh cyber cafes are run by independent entities l Currently, there are only two organised players in this space — Sify iway and Reliance WebworldThese facts are not mere internet trivia, but a significant set of numbers on the cyber cafe business that has got Ideacts Innovation ticking. This Bangalore-based technology start-up has found a great opportunity for advertisers in this largely unorganised sector. The company has developed a novel application by which marketers can run ads on a custom interface that would substitute the conventional desktop in these cyber cafés. Ideacts Innovation says it has received a first-round funding worth $5 million from the US-based venture fund Sequoia Capital for its venture. The company, in fact, has already signed up 625 cafés totalling more than 5,000 terminals in eight cities. It is targeting 3,500 cafés with close to 30,000 terminals this year. It would install the software and market the platform with advertisers. In return, the cafés would get a share of the revenues as well as technical support. Rudrajeet Desai, co-founder and CEO, Ideacts Innovations, said, “We currently have a revenue-sharing model with the cyber cafés. Besides this, there is also a fixed payment made to these cafés. We have had about 75 campaigns from different brands trying out this system. Large advertisers, including such as Cadburys, Perfetti, Pepsi and Google are already using our platform.” The platform entails more than three-fourth of the screen space reserved for ads with the rest being used for links to internet tools. Detailing its reasons for investing in the firm, R Ramaraj, senior advisor, Sequoia Capital, said, “One way to look at the venture is the number of screens that could be available. In one lakh cyber cafes, there could be at least one million screens available for advertisers.” The firm has funded the likes of Yahoo, Google, Cisco Systems, Oracle and Apple and Youtube. In India, it has invested over $1.2 billion in various ventures
Lifestyle - US Leads !
WASHINGTON: The US leads the world in rates of experimenting with marijuana and cocaine despite strict drug laws, World Health Organisation researchers said on Tuesday. Countries with looser drug laws have lower rates of abuse, the researchers report in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Medicine . The survey of 54,000 people in 17 countries found that 16% of people in the US had used cocaine in their lifetimes — far higher than the next highest rate, found in New Zealand, where 4.3% of people reported having used cocaine. More than 42% of Americans admitted to having tried cannabis, closely followed by 41% in New Zealand, Louisa Degenhardt of the University of New South Wales in Sydney and colleagues found. Americans were also the most likely to have smoked, with 74% saying they used tobacco at some time in their lives, although current smoking rates are far lower at 21%. The next-highest lifetime smoking rate was found in Lebanon at 67% with 60% of Mexicans and 61% of Ukrainians having ever smoked. Alcohol was by far the most common substance used, the researchers found in their interviews with people. By the age of 21, up to 99% of Europeans, 92% of Japanese, 94% of New Zealanders and 93% of people in the US had tasted alcohol. The researchers said their findings shed light on drug, alcohol and smoking policy
India - IIT Coaching classes a 10K Crore industry?
NEW DELHI: Coaching for admission to the IITs and other engineering colleges has acquired the status of a big industry in India. According to the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry, the size of the industry is Rs 10,000 crore. ASSOCHAM’s conclusion is based on the assumption that six lakh students attend these classes every year and the average cost for each student is Rs 1.7 lakh, a spokesman for the industry body told TOI. The staggering sum of Rs 10,000 crore being netted every year by private academies who coach students for admission tests can fund 30 to 40 new IITs, ASSOCHAM said. Calling for deregulation of higher education, ASSOCHAM president Sajjan Jindal said the beneficiaries of the current system were those running big educational institutions and coaching centres. "The amount of money which goes to these institutions is enough to open 30 to 40 IITs with lots of seats that can ensure admission to average candidates," he said. Those familiar with the coaching industry pointed out that both figures number of students going to coaching classes and the average cost per student seem exaggerated. The average cost per student cited by ASSOCHAM is too high, they said, pointing out that the cost in smaller cities which have many successful coaching institutes is much lower. They also said the number of students attending coaching classes could be much less than six lakh. TOI had recently done a survey of the coaching classes at Kota, the hub of the III-JEE coaching industry, and arrived at a ballpark figure of Rs 550 crore for the size of the industry there. At least 50% of the students who appear in the entrance tests for admissions to IITs and other engineering colleges enrol with coaching centres to beat the cutthroat competition, ASSOCHAM said. The industry body also said that 80,000-90,000 students go abroad for higher studies, leading to a high foreign exchange outflow. "If quality institutions are provided, a large number of students will stay back and contribute to the nation," ASSOCHAM said. It said that more institutions of excellence should come up and suggested that private players and big industrial groups should be encouraged in higher education. According to ASSOCHAM, India has over 12 million students in higher education but fewer than 350,000 faculty members.
Columnists - Sitaram Yechury
Eric Hobsbawm titled his memoirs of the 20th century interesting ti-mes, borrowing from an ancient Oriental curse, despite its doubtful origins: ‘May you live in interesting times.’ The current political uncertainties centering around the dispute between the UPA government and the Left parties (which provide crucial outside support) on the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal are, indeed, such times.
The UPA came into existence because the Left provided the decisive support based on its commitment to have a secular dispensation at the helm of affairs. This support was extended despite the fact that of the 61 Left MPs in the Lok Sabha, 54 of them reached there by defeating Congress candidates. Such commitment of the Left to have a government of the secular forces remains.
However, the UPA also came into existence on the basis of a Common Minimum Programme (CMP). This programme was arrived at after serious and prolonged discussions. In the process, the initial formulation in the foreign policy section, seeking a strategic alliance with the US, was replaced with the following: “While pursuing closer engagement and relations with the US, independence of India’s foreign policy position on all regional and global issues will be maintained.” Further, the CMP defines such an independent foreign policy to be pursued, “to promote multipolarity in world relations and oppose all attempts at unilateralism”. Through these columns, we had shown in the past how the Indo-US 123 agreement rooted firmly in the US Hyde Act severely compromises such an independent foreign policy. Additionally, it also draws India into the US’s global strategic framework that impinges upon our sovereignty.
Be that as it may, the fact remains that this Indo-US nuclear deal is outside the framework of the CMP which is the basis on which the Left extends its support to the UPA. It is, therefore, the UPA that is departing from the CMP. One may well argue that a departure which is good for the country should be supported. As we have seen, apart from violating the foreign policy positions of the CMP, this nuclear deal is not even worthy in terms of India’s much-needed energy augmentation. It is prohibitively expensive. The targeted 20,000 MW if generated through using either coal, water or gas (all of which we have in abundance) would cost around Rs 60,000 crore while using imported nuclear reactors would cost us over Rs 2 lakh crore.
Just imagine the benefits of utilising this difference of amount in the fields of education and public health. With just 7 per cent of our eligible youth entering higher education, India is creating a flutter in the international knowledge economy. We could increase these numbers instead of providing huge profits to multinational corporations from whom we intend to import nuclear reactors.
Leave aside other details and consider the larger question. The UPA and its CMP provided an opportunity for a paradigm shift in the content of the economic reforms, i.e. shift the focus from being solely preoccupied with corporate profits towards improving people’s welfare. Some important measures in this direction have, indeed, been taken, despite tardy implem-entation, like the rural employment guarantee scheme and forest rights to the tribals. There are increased allocations in health and education, though not to the extent promised in the CMP. Unfortunately, however, much of the CMP’s content has become a victim to the neo-liberal economic agenda that continues to be pursued.
There was yet another paradigm shift taking place. This was in the content of public discourse. The communal content of public discourse during the six-year BJP-led NDA rule was increasingly being replaced by discussions on vital issues of people’s welfare like employment guarantee, farm loan waivers, revival of sick public sector units, right to information etc. The country was no longer besieged with being asked to take a position on M.F. Husain’s paintings or Deepa Mehta’s films or Ghulam Ali’s ghazals. This shift in the terms and content of public discourse is, alas, being threatened to be reversed.
This column reaches the readers on the day of a ‘Bharat bandh’ called by the BJP on the revocation of the land allotted to the Amarnath Shrine Board in Jammu and Kashmir. Such whipping up of communal passions is central to the BJP’s electoral agenda. The BJP resurrected its core communal demands like the building up a temple in Ayodhya, the common civil code, replacing dharma nirpekshata with panth nirpekshata in our Constitution.
Back in the 1990s, the BJP came before the people with three ‘B’s — bhookh, bhay and bhrashtachar — promising to eradicate them. However, its six years in office have compounded the people’s miseries on each of these counts. For the coming general elections, they have forwarded three ‘I’s instead — inflation, internal security and incompetence. Their track record on each of these issues is hardly anything to write home about. These slogans apart, it is clear, both in the deliberations of its national executive and the pronouncements by its leaders, that the hardcore communal agenda will be its bedrock in the coming electoral campaigns to consolidate the ‘Hindu vote bank’.
As this needs to be checked in order to safeguard and strengthen India’s secular democratic foundations, it is imperative that the UPA abandons its digressions from the CMP and gets down to seriously implementing the pro-people content of the CMP. Three of the past four years were pre-occupied with public airing of differences between the UPA and the Left on this Indo-US nuclear deal. The UPA must give up pursuing something that is not part of its CMP and resolve the present crisis. Instead of being cursed, let these interesting times be put to use for creating a better India.
Sitaram Yechury is CPI(M) Politburo member and MP
The UPA came into existence because the Left provided the decisive support based on its commitment to have a secular dispensation at the helm of affairs. This support was extended despite the fact that of the 61 Left MPs in the Lok Sabha, 54 of them reached there by defeating Congress candidates. Such commitment of the Left to have a government of the secular forces remains.
However, the UPA also came into existence on the basis of a Common Minimum Programme (CMP). This programme was arrived at after serious and prolonged discussions. In the process, the initial formulation in the foreign policy section, seeking a strategic alliance with the US, was replaced with the following: “While pursuing closer engagement and relations with the US, independence of India’s foreign policy position on all regional and global issues will be maintained.” Further, the CMP defines such an independent foreign policy to be pursued, “to promote multipolarity in world relations and oppose all attempts at unilateralism”. Through these columns, we had shown in the past how the Indo-US 123 agreement rooted firmly in the US Hyde Act severely compromises such an independent foreign policy. Additionally, it also draws India into the US’s global strategic framework that impinges upon our sovereignty.
Be that as it may, the fact remains that this Indo-US nuclear deal is outside the framework of the CMP which is the basis on which the Left extends its support to the UPA. It is, therefore, the UPA that is departing from the CMP. One may well argue that a departure which is good for the country should be supported. As we have seen, apart from violating the foreign policy positions of the CMP, this nuclear deal is not even worthy in terms of India’s much-needed energy augmentation. It is prohibitively expensive. The targeted 20,000 MW if generated through using either coal, water or gas (all of which we have in abundance) would cost around Rs 60,000 crore while using imported nuclear reactors would cost us over Rs 2 lakh crore.
Just imagine the benefits of utilising this difference of amount in the fields of education and public health. With just 7 per cent of our eligible youth entering higher education, India is creating a flutter in the international knowledge economy. We could increase these numbers instead of providing huge profits to multinational corporations from whom we intend to import nuclear reactors.
Leave aside other details and consider the larger question. The UPA and its CMP provided an opportunity for a paradigm shift in the content of the economic reforms, i.e. shift the focus from being solely preoccupied with corporate profits towards improving people’s welfare. Some important measures in this direction have, indeed, been taken, despite tardy implem-entation, like the rural employment guarantee scheme and forest rights to the tribals. There are increased allocations in health and education, though not to the extent promised in the CMP. Unfortunately, however, much of the CMP’s content has become a victim to the neo-liberal economic agenda that continues to be pursued.
There was yet another paradigm shift taking place. This was in the content of public discourse. The communal content of public discourse during the six-year BJP-led NDA rule was increasingly being replaced by discussions on vital issues of people’s welfare like employment guarantee, farm loan waivers, revival of sick public sector units, right to information etc. The country was no longer besieged with being asked to take a position on M.F. Husain’s paintings or Deepa Mehta’s films or Ghulam Ali’s ghazals. This shift in the terms and content of public discourse is, alas, being threatened to be reversed.
This column reaches the readers on the day of a ‘Bharat bandh’ called by the BJP on the revocation of the land allotted to the Amarnath Shrine Board in Jammu and Kashmir. Such whipping up of communal passions is central to the BJP’s electoral agenda. The BJP resurrected its core communal demands like the building up a temple in Ayodhya, the common civil code, replacing dharma nirpekshata with panth nirpekshata in our Constitution.
Back in the 1990s, the BJP came before the people with three ‘B’s — bhookh, bhay and bhrashtachar — promising to eradicate them. However, its six years in office have compounded the people’s miseries on each of these counts. For the coming general elections, they have forwarded three ‘I’s instead — inflation, internal security and incompetence. Their track record on each of these issues is hardly anything to write home about. These slogans apart, it is clear, both in the deliberations of its national executive and the pronouncements by its leaders, that the hardcore communal agenda will be its bedrock in the coming electoral campaigns to consolidate the ‘Hindu vote bank’.
As this needs to be checked in order to safeguard and strengthen India’s secular democratic foundations, it is imperative that the UPA abandons its digressions from the CMP and gets down to seriously implementing the pro-people content of the CMP. Three of the past four years were pre-occupied with public airing of differences between the UPA and the Left on this Indo-US nuclear deal. The UPA must give up pursuing something that is not part of its CMP and resolve the present crisis. Instead of being cursed, let these interesting times be put to use for creating a better India.
Sitaram Yechury is CPI(M) Politburo member and MP
India - Wasted grain could've fed 6 lakh for 10 years
India has lost more than 10 lakh metric tonnes of foodgrains stored in Food Corporation of India godowns over the last decade, enough to feed six to seven lakh people for 10 years.
Godowns in Punjab, the country’s granary, accounted for half of this loss, according to statistics handed over by the FCI to a right to information applicant on the extent of foodgrains damaged in its godowns.
Going by NSSO estimates of per capita cereal consumption — roughly 150 kg per person per year — between six and seven lakh more people could have been fed per year in the last 10 years if this damage could have been prevented.
The reply to the application filed by Dev Ashish Bhattacharya also gives details of the money spent on trying to preserve foodgrains in FCI godowns during the same period. This amount comes to a whopping Rs 243 crores.
Moreover, the amount spent in disposing of foodgrains damaged in the godowns in the last 10 years adds up to more than Rs 2 crore. Ironically, Jharkhand spent more than half of this amount despite the fact that it did not have a proportionally large quantum of damaged foodgrains.
The implications of the damage can be understood from the fact that till 2001, about 27 per cent of India’s population — about 270 million people — lived below the poverty line, defined only on calorific requirements. About 35 per cent of Indians live on $1 a day or less, and the percentage of Indians living under $2 a day goes up to 80 per cent.
Eight million children in India are malnourished, more than one-third of the world’s malnourished children, said Dr. Victor Aguayo of Unicef. Dr Vinod Kumar Paul, who heads the pediatrics department at AIIMS, said 28 per cent children in India get malnourished within the first week after birth.
Godowns in Punjab, the country’s granary, accounted for half of this loss, according to statistics handed over by the FCI to a right to information applicant on the extent of foodgrains damaged in its godowns.
Going by NSSO estimates of per capita cereal consumption — roughly 150 kg per person per year — between six and seven lakh more people could have been fed per year in the last 10 years if this damage could have been prevented.
The reply to the application filed by Dev Ashish Bhattacharya also gives details of the money spent on trying to preserve foodgrains in FCI godowns during the same period. This amount comes to a whopping Rs 243 crores.
Moreover, the amount spent in disposing of foodgrains damaged in the godowns in the last 10 years adds up to more than Rs 2 crore. Ironically, Jharkhand spent more than half of this amount despite the fact that it did not have a proportionally large quantum of damaged foodgrains.
The implications of the damage can be understood from the fact that till 2001, about 27 per cent of India’s population — about 270 million people — lived below the poverty line, defined only on calorific requirements. About 35 per cent of Indians live on $1 a day or less, and the percentage of Indians living under $2 a day goes up to 80 per cent.
Eight million children in India are malnourished, more than one-third of the world’s malnourished children, said Dr. Victor Aguayo of Unicef. Dr Vinod Kumar Paul, who heads the pediatrics department at AIIMS, said 28 per cent children in India get malnourished within the first week after birth.
India - Country's Seventh IIM starts tommorrow
The first academic session of the country's seventh IIM, the Rajiv Gandhi Indian Institute of Management (RGIIM) in Shillong, will begin on Friday.Meghalaya chief minister Donkupar Roy will inaugurate the first batch of Post Graduate Diploma in Management in the presence of Chairman, Board of Governors, RGIIM, Prof R N Dutta, Chairman Headstrong Inc USA and founder member of HCL Arjun Malhotra and Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister T K Nair, the institute's Director Prof Ashoke K Dutta said.Dutta said the institute will commence its first academic session in the Mayurbhanj Complex in Nongthymmai, which previously housed the North Eastern Hill University. Work will soon commence on a 120 acre site for the permanent campus.The Institute offers the Post-Graduate Programme in Managment [PGP], which is a two-year full time residential programme for graduate students from all disciplines wanting to choose a career in management.The Institute envisages for its flagship programme, namely, Post Graduate Diploma in Business Management (PGDBM), an annual student intake capacity of 60 in the first year. This is planned to be increased to 120 in the third year and 180 in the sixth year.The institute will conduct courses with Post-Graduate Diploma in Business Management, fellowship programme in management, management development programmes, tourism and hospitality management, tele-services and telemedicine, information systems and technology and subjects of local relevance such as tourism, horticulture and hydel power
India - More Model schools coming up
India will set up 2,500 new model schools designed after the existing state-run Kendriya Vidyalayas to provide quality education to students in "every block of the country".
"We are rolling out these 2,500 schools from August," said Arun K Rath, secretary in the human resource development (HRD) ministry.
"They will be quality schools like the existing Kendriya Vidyalayas (KVs). Our ministry wants that all blocks across the country must have at least one model school," Rath told IANS.
He said the HRD ministry and the state governments have agreed on all arrangements, including financial matters.
"Every school will need an investment of Rs 30 million. While the central government will bear 75 per cent of the cost, the state governments' share would be 25 per cent," the secretary said.
Rath said KVs are known for quality education and discipline. They have been doing well in both the Class 10 and Class 12 board examinations. "We have modelled these new schools after KVs to keep the education record high."
Since their inception in 1965, the Kendriya Vidyalayas have come to be known as centres of excellence in school education. Run under the HRD ministry, India currently has 981 such central schools.
He said all these would be co-educational schools and set up over a period of three years. "The selection of students will be taken care of by the state governments."
"We want to make sure that all deserving students have access to some good schools," he said.
Rath said apart from these 2,500 model schools, the HRD ministry was in talks with private parties to set up 2,500 additional model schools on a public-private participation (PPP) model.
"Nothing has been finalised on the PPP model schools. But efforts are certainly on. At this point, I cannot give a timeline on when these PPP schools will begin," he said.
The secretary said his ministry is striving to reduce the number of out of school students and the government is achieving steady progress through the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), a programme aimed at universalising elementary education in the country.
"Through SSA we have managed to achieve considerable progress. While in 2005 there were 40 million out of school students (6-14 age group), currently only 4.5 million students of school-going age are out of school," he explained.
"We are rolling out these 2,500 schools from August," said Arun K Rath, secretary in the human resource development (HRD) ministry.
"They will be quality schools like the existing Kendriya Vidyalayas (KVs). Our ministry wants that all blocks across the country must have at least one model school," Rath told IANS.
He said the HRD ministry and the state governments have agreed on all arrangements, including financial matters.
"Every school will need an investment of Rs 30 million. While the central government will bear 75 per cent of the cost, the state governments' share would be 25 per cent," the secretary said.
Rath said KVs are known for quality education and discipline. They have been doing well in both the Class 10 and Class 12 board examinations. "We have modelled these new schools after KVs to keep the education record high."
Since their inception in 1965, the Kendriya Vidyalayas have come to be known as centres of excellence in school education. Run under the HRD ministry, India currently has 981 such central schools.
He said all these would be co-educational schools and set up over a period of three years. "The selection of students will be taken care of by the state governments."
"We want to make sure that all deserving students have access to some good schools," he said.
Rath said apart from these 2,500 model schools, the HRD ministry was in talks with private parties to set up 2,500 additional model schools on a public-private participation (PPP) model.
"Nothing has been finalised on the PPP model schools. But efforts are certainly on. At this point, I cannot give a timeline on when these PPP schools will begin," he said.
The secretary said his ministry is striving to reduce the number of out of school students and the government is achieving steady progress through the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), a programme aimed at universalising elementary education in the country.
"Through SSA we have managed to achieve considerable progress. While in 2005 there were 40 million out of school students (6-14 age group), currently only 4.5 million students of school-going age are out of school," he explained.
Business - Have we fallen out of love with e-bay?
Jess Cartner-Morley
Nearly 13 years ago, 28-year-old software developer Pierre Omidyar had an idea for an online auction site. Under the title AuctionWeb, he offered a broken laser pointer for sale to the highest bidder. Pleasantly surprised when the item sold for £14.83, Omidyar contacted the buyer to check that he realised the pointer was broken. “I’m a collector of broken laser pointers,” came the reply.
That was the birth of eBay, one of the internet’s most prized success stories. From the simple realisation that there is a potential buyer out there for almost anything, and that the internet makes such matchmaking possible, a giant business was created. eBay currently has 84 million active users worldwide; last year, the total value of items sold was nearly $64bn.
But the tide may be turning against the internet’s golden child. On Tuesday, a French court ordered eBay to pay €38.6m in damages to LVMH, the luxury giant behind Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior, for negligence in allowing the sale of fake bags and clothes, and of perfume that it was not licensed to sell. The ruling comes hot on the heels of a judgment by another French court that ordered eBay to pay €20,000 to Hermes for allowing the sale of fake bags. L’Oreal has lawsuits pending against eBay in five European countries and there is another filed by Tiffany in the U.S.
As part of its case, LVMH presented evidence to the court that of the 300,000 products purporting to be Louis Vuitton or Christian Dior sold on the site in the second quarter of 2006, 90 per cent were fakes. As an ex-eBay seller myself, I became aware of the scale of the problem some time last year. For a few years, I had been funding my handbag habit by re-selling items I had tired of. But quite suddenly, the prices began to drop steeply until there was little point in selling on eBay, and I switched to a vintage store. It seemed that fakes had flooded the eBay market to the extent that buyers no longer expected to find the real thing — and so, no longer expected to pay the real price.
There are still genuine designer goods to be found on eBay. A seller who goes under the name of “Authentic LV lady” is offering a slightly used monogram Louis Vuitton handbag for $829.90, and a Hermes Kelly bag for $5,599. She has posted numerous close-up photos with each offering, showing the logo-stamped zip pulls, the quality of the stitching, the dust bag and boxes.
There are ways to spot a fake. Some are technical: if you have an intricate knowledge of the details of the bag you want to buy, you can check that logos are in the right place, that the colour of the lining is correct. Stitching is often a giveaway: cheap factories struggle to replicate the even, immaculate stitching of top-quality bags. (For instance, the leather tab that attaches the handle to the classic Louis Vuitton Speedy bag will always have five regular, even stitches across the top.) Some sellers are crafty in implying authenticity without declaring it outright, to avoid liability: for instance, they will use the abbreviation “auth” in the description, but not the word “authentic”. Others give themselves away more obliquely: those who boast a $1,650 bag is “genuine leather” are unlikely to be dealing with real quality merchandise.
Pierre Gode of LVMH declared that Tuesday’s ruling “protected brands by considering them an important part of French heritage.” But what is really at stake, of course, is not principle but cash: luxury retailers have long tried to combat counterfeiters, and in eBay they now have a wealthy target to sue. eBay argues that it has already clamped down on the counterfeit problem. The company says it employs 2,000 people worldwide to spot and block counterfeit sales, and that 95 per cent of fraudulent listings are removed before the auction ends.
But it is not just the luxury giants that are finding fault with the world’s largest online auction house. There are estimated to be more than a million people who make a living selling on eBay; at a recent eBay conference, many of the small sellers berated the company for what it sees as the “gentrification” of the site.
Their concern is that eBay, built on the back of small sellers, is now abandoning them in order to become a rival to Amazon. They point out that the “auction” element that gave eBay its erratic charm is being phased out.
Nearly 13 years ago, 28-year-old software developer Pierre Omidyar had an idea for an online auction site. Under the title AuctionWeb, he offered a broken laser pointer for sale to the highest bidder. Pleasantly surprised when the item sold for £14.83, Omidyar contacted the buyer to check that he realised the pointer was broken. “I’m a collector of broken laser pointers,” came the reply.
That was the birth of eBay, one of the internet’s most prized success stories. From the simple realisation that there is a potential buyer out there for almost anything, and that the internet makes such matchmaking possible, a giant business was created. eBay currently has 84 million active users worldwide; last year, the total value of items sold was nearly $64bn.
But the tide may be turning against the internet’s golden child. On Tuesday, a French court ordered eBay to pay €38.6m in damages to LVMH, the luxury giant behind Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior, for negligence in allowing the sale of fake bags and clothes, and of perfume that it was not licensed to sell. The ruling comes hot on the heels of a judgment by another French court that ordered eBay to pay €20,000 to Hermes for allowing the sale of fake bags. L’Oreal has lawsuits pending against eBay in five European countries and there is another filed by Tiffany in the U.S.
As part of its case, LVMH presented evidence to the court that of the 300,000 products purporting to be Louis Vuitton or Christian Dior sold on the site in the second quarter of 2006, 90 per cent were fakes. As an ex-eBay seller myself, I became aware of the scale of the problem some time last year. For a few years, I had been funding my handbag habit by re-selling items I had tired of. But quite suddenly, the prices began to drop steeply until there was little point in selling on eBay, and I switched to a vintage store. It seemed that fakes had flooded the eBay market to the extent that buyers no longer expected to find the real thing — and so, no longer expected to pay the real price.
There are still genuine designer goods to be found on eBay. A seller who goes under the name of “Authentic LV lady” is offering a slightly used monogram Louis Vuitton handbag for $829.90, and a Hermes Kelly bag for $5,599. She has posted numerous close-up photos with each offering, showing the logo-stamped zip pulls, the quality of the stitching, the dust bag and boxes.
There are ways to spot a fake. Some are technical: if you have an intricate knowledge of the details of the bag you want to buy, you can check that logos are in the right place, that the colour of the lining is correct. Stitching is often a giveaway: cheap factories struggle to replicate the even, immaculate stitching of top-quality bags. (For instance, the leather tab that attaches the handle to the classic Louis Vuitton Speedy bag will always have five regular, even stitches across the top.) Some sellers are crafty in implying authenticity without declaring it outright, to avoid liability: for instance, they will use the abbreviation “auth” in the description, but not the word “authentic”. Others give themselves away more obliquely: those who boast a $1,650 bag is “genuine leather” are unlikely to be dealing with real quality merchandise.
Pierre Gode of LVMH declared that Tuesday’s ruling “protected brands by considering them an important part of French heritage.” But what is really at stake, of course, is not principle but cash: luxury retailers have long tried to combat counterfeiters, and in eBay they now have a wealthy target to sue. eBay argues that it has already clamped down on the counterfeit problem. The company says it employs 2,000 people worldwide to spot and block counterfeit sales, and that 95 per cent of fraudulent listings are removed before the auction ends.
But it is not just the luxury giants that are finding fault with the world’s largest online auction house. There are estimated to be more than a million people who make a living selling on eBay; at a recent eBay conference, many of the small sellers berated the company for what it sees as the “gentrification” of the site.
Their concern is that eBay, built on the back of small sellers, is now abandoning them in order to become a rival to Amazon. They point out that the “auction” element that gave eBay its erratic charm is being phased out.
World - Cracking Down on Taliban,Possibly
A year ago, Pakistan had to deal head-on with a problem that was staring it in the face for more than six months. In the first week of July 2007, militants holed up in the Lal Masjid in the heart of Islamabad — literally under the nose of the Inter-Services Intelligence, whose headquarters are nearby — dared troops surrounding the mosque and the Jamia Hafsa girls’ seminary next door to take them on. After a week of trying to get the militants to surrender, a team of army commandos launched an operation in the mosque. Over 100 people, including soldiers, militants and others, perhaps non-militants, who had chosen to stay on inside rather than surrender, were killed.
As Pakistan approaches the first anniversary of the Lal Masjid denouement, the newly elected government is confronted with a similar challenge, only far bigger. While it was sorting itself out over the judicial crisis, complacent it could tame militants through talks, the entire north-western frontier was turning into one huge Lal Masjid. Suddenly, it seemed as if the North-West Frontier Province capital Peshawar was in imminent danger of falling into Taliban hands. The Pakistan People’s Party-led government had to take the call: continue saying it would talk to the Taliban, or call in the troops? The situation had so deteriorated that, in effect, there was no option. The government chose the troops, while keeping the door open for talks.
The last few days have seen paramilitary operations in Khyber Agency of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, from where the so-called “criminal gangs” with links to Taliban militants were threatening nearby Peshawar, making brazen forays into the city in vehicles mounted with weapons, threatening music and video shop owners and kidnapping for ransom. Khyber is also a main supply route for NATO-ISAF forces in Afghanistan, and the presence of these groups and their connections to the Taliban posed a major threat to logistics convoys passing that way.
The federal government appears also to have been jolted by the failing negotiations in South Waziristan. So secretive were the negotiations that there is no clarity even on who the parties to the talks were. Some say it was the Pakistan Army calling the shots on the government side. The government insists it was talking to Mehsud tribesmen and not the Tehreek-i-Taliban commander Beithullah Mehsud, named for Benazir Bhutto’s killing. Whatever it was, little remained of it after Beithullah Mehsud’s men abducted and killed 28 tribesmen of a government-sponsored peace committee in the area. The killings appeared to be a direct message from the militants that peace can only be negotiated on their terms.
Separately, in the NWFP’s Swat valley, where the military drove the militants into the hills in November 2007, the Awami National Party-led government has been in peace negotiations with the Taliban affiliated Tehreek-e-Nifas-e-Sharia Mohammedi. But despite the ANP claims that the peace agreement is on track, militants have continued their attacks, including burning down girls’ schools and targeting security checkpoints.
Not surprisingly, the government and the Pakistan Army were under tremendous U.S. pressure to rethink their peace deals with the militants. Last week, the government announced it was alive to the threat to Pakistan from within its borders. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani chaired an emergency meeting at which Cabinet Ministers, the Chief of the Army Staff and intelligence heads, and other senior officials accepted that terrorism and extremism posed “the gravest challenge” to Pakistan’s security, and agreed not to permit Pakistani territory to be used against other countries, “especially” Afghanistan.
The meeting also mandated the Pakistan Army as “the principal for application of military effort” to deal with the deteriorating situation, to be used on a “selective” basis, alongside peace talks and economic development of the frontier areas.
Within days, the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary, had moved in to Khyber to clean up the area. Thus far, it has gone the government’s way. None of the three groups active in the area — the Lashkar-i-Islam, its rival Ansar-ul-Islam, and a group called the Prevention of Vice and Protection of Virtue — offered any resistance, and there were few casualties.
Experts on the region who had long argued for a carrot-and-stick policy as the only solution welcomed the operation as long overdue. “Peace agreements [in the tribal areas] cannot succeed unless they [the militants] are told in very strong terms that either you come to terms or force will be used against you,” said Brigadier (retd) Mahmood Shah, a former FATA secretary.
Writing in the Daily Times, Ejaz Haider pointed out that aside from all the other good reasons for taking on the militants, it legally devolved on Pakistan to do so in order to stop the Taliban on its side from foraying into Afghanistan, where a Security Council-mandated international coalition was fighting a war against them. If Pakistan did not take action, there was sufficient ground in law for the international coalition to obtain the Security Council’s authorisation to deal with the problem on its own.
But action was bound to evoke a reaction. As the paramilitaries set to work in Khyber, Baithullah Mehsud called off the South Waziristan negotiations and warned of retaliation in Punjab and Sindh. In Swat, the Taliban suspended talks with the NWFP government. And while the religious parties attacked the government for using the Pakistan forces against “brother” Muslims under U.S pressure, the Pakistan Muslim League (N) — it already has a tense relationship with the PPP over the issue of the judiciary — also joined in. Claiming not to have been consulted by the government of which it is a part, it described the paramilitary operation as a “military invasion” against “our own people.”
Is 2007 about to repeat itself? Criticised for looking on passively as the Lal Masjid militants entrenched themselves from January to July last year, President Pervez Musharraf was the first to be surprised that instead of praising him for finally taking them on, public opinion in Pakistan rounded on him for doing so. Stories spread of “thousands of Koran-reciting little girls” killed in the operation. General Musharraf, now retired, was at the time still the Army chief, and the Pakistan Army faced public revulsion for acting against fellow Pakistanis.
The operation set off a wave of suicide attacks in the NWFP and other parts of the country, targeting soldiers and civilians alike. Arguably, the present situation is described as a fallout of Lal Masjid. The ruling Pakistan Muslim League (Q) distanced itself from the operation, and cited it as one reason for its humiliating defeat in the February 2008 elections.
Keen to cut its losses, the Pakistan Army was reportedly negotiating its withdrawal from the tribal areas much before the new government came to power. Even before the elections, the army is said to have negotiated an agreement with the North Waziristan tribals. The federal government’s peace negotiations in South Waziristan, and the provincial government’s agreement with the Swat Taliban further helped the military disengage from the region.
The question now is: will the new government retain the stomach for taking the military operations into areas such as South Waziristan where the real Taliban challenge lies, especially in the event of a militant backlash resulting in military and civilian casualties that could turn public opinion against the operations? As it is, the government has fought shy of calling the present action a “military operation,” insisting that the paramilitaries are only restoring “law and order.”
According to Mr. Haider, the government has no other option but to press ahead, as “being squeamish about the political cost has [only] served to make the situation increasingly intractable.” Islamabad, he advised, “will have to be resolute, plan carefully and execute ruthlessly.” ‘Ownership’ of war on terror
Notwithstanding PML(N) objections, analysts point out that the operations are being carried out by a popularly elected democratic civilian government. Last week’s top level meeting was seen as significant for two reasons: challenging popular rhetoric that the battle for the frontier is America’s war thrust on Pakistan, the elected government finally took “ownership” of the “war against terror” as a war in Pakistan’s national interest; secondly, it provided the backing of an elected government to military action.
“The Army knows its responsibility but it wants the use of force to be within a political framework so that it does not get all the blame when something goes wrong. With a civilian government which has been democratically elected by a majority of Pakistanis, that framework is now available,” said Mr. Shah, the former FATA secretary.
Importantly, the ANP seems to be on board although, in order to cover its own back against a possible political backlash in the NWFP, it has been keen to keep distance from the operation. Afrasiab Khattak, the party provincial chief recently appointed by the NWFP government as its “peace envoy” for negotiations with the Taliban, said the security situation in the province had “improved” after the operation was launched but said his government had nothing to do with it, as it was taking place in FATA.
No one wants to predict how much bigger the operation may get, if at all. Some sceptics are even asking if the current operation, in a relatively easy area against gangs of “petty criminals” who are not really hardened Taliban fighters, was a put-on show for the benefit of the Americans. But according to Mr. Khattak, for any policy in the region to be successful in the long-term, the federal government must discontinue its secretive dealings in the tribal areas — the ANP has not hidden its pique at being excluded from the South Waziristan talks — and the political leadership of the country must “urgently” frame a comprehensive strategy for FATA in order to end the social, economic and political isolation of the region.
For India, the PPP-led government’s new resolve to crack down on militancy is of interest for how it may impact on banned Kashmir-linked jihadist groups such as the Jaish-e-Mohammed and the Lashkar-e-Taiba that have been crawling out of the woodwork in the political confusion of recent months.
As Pakistan approaches the first anniversary of the Lal Masjid denouement, the newly elected government is confronted with a similar challenge, only far bigger. While it was sorting itself out over the judicial crisis, complacent it could tame militants through talks, the entire north-western frontier was turning into one huge Lal Masjid. Suddenly, it seemed as if the North-West Frontier Province capital Peshawar was in imminent danger of falling into Taliban hands. The Pakistan People’s Party-led government had to take the call: continue saying it would talk to the Taliban, or call in the troops? The situation had so deteriorated that, in effect, there was no option. The government chose the troops, while keeping the door open for talks.
The last few days have seen paramilitary operations in Khyber Agency of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, from where the so-called “criminal gangs” with links to Taliban militants were threatening nearby Peshawar, making brazen forays into the city in vehicles mounted with weapons, threatening music and video shop owners and kidnapping for ransom. Khyber is also a main supply route for NATO-ISAF forces in Afghanistan, and the presence of these groups and their connections to the Taliban posed a major threat to logistics convoys passing that way.
The federal government appears also to have been jolted by the failing negotiations in South Waziristan. So secretive were the negotiations that there is no clarity even on who the parties to the talks were. Some say it was the Pakistan Army calling the shots on the government side. The government insists it was talking to Mehsud tribesmen and not the Tehreek-i-Taliban commander Beithullah Mehsud, named for Benazir Bhutto’s killing. Whatever it was, little remained of it after Beithullah Mehsud’s men abducted and killed 28 tribesmen of a government-sponsored peace committee in the area. The killings appeared to be a direct message from the militants that peace can only be negotiated on their terms.
Separately, in the NWFP’s Swat valley, where the military drove the militants into the hills in November 2007, the Awami National Party-led government has been in peace negotiations with the Taliban affiliated Tehreek-e-Nifas-e-Sharia Mohammedi. But despite the ANP claims that the peace agreement is on track, militants have continued their attacks, including burning down girls’ schools and targeting security checkpoints.
Not surprisingly, the government and the Pakistan Army were under tremendous U.S. pressure to rethink their peace deals with the militants. Last week, the government announced it was alive to the threat to Pakistan from within its borders. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani chaired an emergency meeting at which Cabinet Ministers, the Chief of the Army Staff and intelligence heads, and other senior officials accepted that terrorism and extremism posed “the gravest challenge” to Pakistan’s security, and agreed not to permit Pakistani territory to be used against other countries, “especially” Afghanistan.
The meeting also mandated the Pakistan Army as “the principal for application of military effort” to deal with the deteriorating situation, to be used on a “selective” basis, alongside peace talks and economic development of the frontier areas.
Within days, the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary, had moved in to Khyber to clean up the area. Thus far, it has gone the government’s way. None of the three groups active in the area — the Lashkar-i-Islam, its rival Ansar-ul-Islam, and a group called the Prevention of Vice and Protection of Virtue — offered any resistance, and there were few casualties.
Experts on the region who had long argued for a carrot-and-stick policy as the only solution welcomed the operation as long overdue. “Peace agreements [in the tribal areas] cannot succeed unless they [the militants] are told in very strong terms that either you come to terms or force will be used against you,” said Brigadier (retd) Mahmood Shah, a former FATA secretary.
Writing in the Daily Times, Ejaz Haider pointed out that aside from all the other good reasons for taking on the militants, it legally devolved on Pakistan to do so in order to stop the Taliban on its side from foraying into Afghanistan, where a Security Council-mandated international coalition was fighting a war against them. If Pakistan did not take action, there was sufficient ground in law for the international coalition to obtain the Security Council’s authorisation to deal with the problem on its own.
But action was bound to evoke a reaction. As the paramilitaries set to work in Khyber, Baithullah Mehsud called off the South Waziristan negotiations and warned of retaliation in Punjab and Sindh. In Swat, the Taliban suspended talks with the NWFP government. And while the religious parties attacked the government for using the Pakistan forces against “brother” Muslims under U.S pressure, the Pakistan Muslim League (N) — it already has a tense relationship with the PPP over the issue of the judiciary — also joined in. Claiming not to have been consulted by the government of which it is a part, it described the paramilitary operation as a “military invasion” against “our own people.”
Is 2007 about to repeat itself? Criticised for looking on passively as the Lal Masjid militants entrenched themselves from January to July last year, President Pervez Musharraf was the first to be surprised that instead of praising him for finally taking them on, public opinion in Pakistan rounded on him for doing so. Stories spread of “thousands of Koran-reciting little girls” killed in the operation. General Musharraf, now retired, was at the time still the Army chief, and the Pakistan Army faced public revulsion for acting against fellow Pakistanis.
The operation set off a wave of suicide attacks in the NWFP and other parts of the country, targeting soldiers and civilians alike. Arguably, the present situation is described as a fallout of Lal Masjid. The ruling Pakistan Muslim League (Q) distanced itself from the operation, and cited it as one reason for its humiliating defeat in the February 2008 elections.
Keen to cut its losses, the Pakistan Army was reportedly negotiating its withdrawal from the tribal areas much before the new government came to power. Even before the elections, the army is said to have negotiated an agreement with the North Waziristan tribals. The federal government’s peace negotiations in South Waziristan, and the provincial government’s agreement with the Swat Taliban further helped the military disengage from the region.
The question now is: will the new government retain the stomach for taking the military operations into areas such as South Waziristan where the real Taliban challenge lies, especially in the event of a militant backlash resulting in military and civilian casualties that could turn public opinion against the operations? As it is, the government has fought shy of calling the present action a “military operation,” insisting that the paramilitaries are only restoring “law and order.”
According to Mr. Haider, the government has no other option but to press ahead, as “being squeamish about the political cost has [only] served to make the situation increasingly intractable.” Islamabad, he advised, “will have to be resolute, plan carefully and execute ruthlessly.” ‘Ownership’ of war on terror
Notwithstanding PML(N) objections, analysts point out that the operations are being carried out by a popularly elected democratic civilian government. Last week’s top level meeting was seen as significant for two reasons: challenging popular rhetoric that the battle for the frontier is America’s war thrust on Pakistan, the elected government finally took “ownership” of the “war against terror” as a war in Pakistan’s national interest; secondly, it provided the backing of an elected government to military action.
“The Army knows its responsibility but it wants the use of force to be within a political framework so that it does not get all the blame when something goes wrong. With a civilian government which has been democratically elected by a majority of Pakistanis, that framework is now available,” said Mr. Shah, the former FATA secretary.
Importantly, the ANP seems to be on board although, in order to cover its own back against a possible political backlash in the NWFP, it has been keen to keep distance from the operation. Afrasiab Khattak, the party provincial chief recently appointed by the NWFP government as its “peace envoy” for negotiations with the Taliban, said the security situation in the province had “improved” after the operation was launched but said his government had nothing to do with it, as it was taking place in FATA.
No one wants to predict how much bigger the operation may get, if at all. Some sceptics are even asking if the current operation, in a relatively easy area against gangs of “petty criminals” who are not really hardened Taliban fighters, was a put-on show for the benefit of the Americans. But according to Mr. Khattak, for any policy in the region to be successful in the long-term, the federal government must discontinue its secretive dealings in the tribal areas — the ANP has not hidden its pique at being excluded from the South Waziristan talks — and the political leadership of the country must “urgently” frame a comprehensive strategy for FATA in order to end the social, economic and political isolation of the region.
For India, the PPP-led government’s new resolve to crack down on militancy is of interest for how it may impact on banned Kashmir-linked jihadist groups such as the Jaish-e-Mohammed and the Lashkar-e-Taiba that have been crawling out of the woodwork in the political confusion of recent months.
Sport - The Nirmal Shekar Column
London: If natural talent is a rare gift in sport, then Marat Safin failed to unwrap his precious package in time.
Now, with time running out, the outrageously talented Russian, aged 28, has begun to appreciate the true value of the athletic bounty that nature has bestowed on him.
Well, it is never too late. For, Safin, world ranked No. 75, now stands between Roger Federer and the Swiss maestro’s sixth straight final appearance in the All England Lawn Tennis Club.Contrasting styles
On Wednesday, in the men’s singles quarterfinals of the 122nd Wimbledon championships, Safin and Federer made light of two rain interruptions to win their quarterfinal matches in contrasting styles.
While Federer outclassed Mario Ancic of Croatia 6-1, 7-5, 6-4, Safin overcame a wobbly start to get past Spaniard Feliciano Lopez 3-6, 7-5, 7-6(1), 6-3.Rain delays
Summer sport in England — especially the tennis on the lawns of the All England Lawn Tennis Club — is conducted in partnership with rain. It has not always been an easy relationship; but nature rules out a quick dissolution of the partnership.
In the event, after more than a week of glorious sunshine and almost uninterrupted tennis, the championship ran into foul weather on Wednesday.
The rain, which had kept away for so long this fortnight, promptly arrived at 12.30 p.m., a half hour ahead of the scheduled start on the Centre and No. 1 courts.
In the event, Federer and Ancic as well as Safin and Lopez, the combatants on those two show courts, did not make an appearance until after 1.45 p.m.Quite a party
By then, quite a few glasses of champagne and hundreds of punnets of strawberries might have been consumed by the fans. The estimated consumption of champagne and strawberries for the fortnight is 17,000 bottles and 20,000 tonnes respectively.
Of course, on the centre court, the classy Cardigan Man — as Federer is known — did not take long to dismantle the game of a player who was the last to beat him at Wimbledon, in 2002.
Ancic appeared to believe that the tactics that worked so well six years ago could be gainfully employed once again.
He served and volleyed even on second serves and the master floated low returns to the Croat’s bootlaces and made a mockery of Ancic’s aggression.
The champion won the first set 6-1 in 20 minutes and it was 1-1 in the second set when the showers returned.
On the No. 1 court, Safin was all at sea against Lopez, the only Spaniard who can be said to be a natural on grass.
Lopez, who shares a house with his good friend Rafa in the Wimbledon village, broke a frustrated Safin in the fourth game and cruised to 5-2 — by which time the giant Russian had already slammed his racquet on the turf a few times.Useful break
The two-hour break allowed time for both Ancic and Safin to re-evaluate their strategies and both did pretty well when play resumed.
Ancic was rather more judicious in his sorties to the net while Safin, at last, seemed to have found a way to deal with the left-handed Lopez’s gracefully executed sliced backhands that saw the balls float over the net like snow-flakes, suck up the moisture and stay low on the turf.
Ancic, for his part, stayed with the five-time champion till 5-5 in the second set, serving with greater confidence and trading shot for deep-flung shot from the baseline. But a nervous backhand volley that failed to cross the net followed by a double fault saw Ancic lose serve in the 11th game.
Federer closed out the set on serve with an ace down the middle.
The storm clouds had disappeared by then but Ancic himself seemed to retreat into his own private haze.
After all, when you find out that your fifth gear is only good enough to run alongside your opponent for a precious few minutes, helplessness and a sense of gloom cannot be avoided.
In the event, Ancic very quickly came to terms with the situation and appeared ready to allow the great man to sprint to the finish, riding on a break in the fifth game of the third set.Great going
“I am playing great. Now it is two more matches. I know how to do it,” said a smiling Federer. “To win one more Wimbledon …” trailed off the man who has now made 17 straight Grand Slam semifinals.
In the women’s doubles quarterfinals, India’s Sania Mirza and her American partner Bethanie Mattek did their best to move mountains but, in the end, were good enough only to offer some high-voltage practice to the Williams sisters ahead of the superstars’ singles semifinal matches on Thursday.Super Sisters
The super sisters won 6-4, 6-3. Serena and Venus found an early break in the first set and, after two rain delays, went on to serve out the set.
In the second, the Indian-American pair broke Venus’s serve to go up 2-0 but once the famous sisters broke Mattek’s serve in the long fifth game, they were unstoppable. Sania was broken in the seventh game and from there it was just a matter of time.
Now, with time running out, the outrageously talented Russian, aged 28, has begun to appreciate the true value of the athletic bounty that nature has bestowed on him.
Well, it is never too late. For, Safin, world ranked No. 75, now stands between Roger Federer and the Swiss maestro’s sixth straight final appearance in the All England Lawn Tennis Club.Contrasting styles
On Wednesday, in the men’s singles quarterfinals of the 122nd Wimbledon championships, Safin and Federer made light of two rain interruptions to win their quarterfinal matches in contrasting styles.
While Federer outclassed Mario Ancic of Croatia 6-1, 7-5, 6-4, Safin overcame a wobbly start to get past Spaniard Feliciano Lopez 3-6, 7-5, 7-6(1), 6-3.Rain delays
Summer sport in England — especially the tennis on the lawns of the All England Lawn Tennis Club — is conducted in partnership with rain. It has not always been an easy relationship; but nature rules out a quick dissolution of the partnership.
In the event, after more than a week of glorious sunshine and almost uninterrupted tennis, the championship ran into foul weather on Wednesday.
The rain, which had kept away for so long this fortnight, promptly arrived at 12.30 p.m., a half hour ahead of the scheduled start on the Centre and No. 1 courts.
In the event, Federer and Ancic as well as Safin and Lopez, the combatants on those two show courts, did not make an appearance until after 1.45 p.m.Quite a party
By then, quite a few glasses of champagne and hundreds of punnets of strawberries might have been consumed by the fans. The estimated consumption of champagne and strawberries for the fortnight is 17,000 bottles and 20,000 tonnes respectively.
Of course, on the centre court, the classy Cardigan Man — as Federer is known — did not take long to dismantle the game of a player who was the last to beat him at Wimbledon, in 2002.
Ancic appeared to believe that the tactics that worked so well six years ago could be gainfully employed once again.
He served and volleyed even on second serves and the master floated low returns to the Croat’s bootlaces and made a mockery of Ancic’s aggression.
The champion won the first set 6-1 in 20 minutes and it was 1-1 in the second set when the showers returned.
On the No. 1 court, Safin was all at sea against Lopez, the only Spaniard who can be said to be a natural on grass.
Lopez, who shares a house with his good friend Rafa in the Wimbledon village, broke a frustrated Safin in the fourth game and cruised to 5-2 — by which time the giant Russian had already slammed his racquet on the turf a few times.Useful break
The two-hour break allowed time for both Ancic and Safin to re-evaluate their strategies and both did pretty well when play resumed.
Ancic was rather more judicious in his sorties to the net while Safin, at last, seemed to have found a way to deal with the left-handed Lopez’s gracefully executed sliced backhands that saw the balls float over the net like snow-flakes, suck up the moisture and stay low on the turf.
Ancic, for his part, stayed with the five-time champion till 5-5 in the second set, serving with greater confidence and trading shot for deep-flung shot from the baseline. But a nervous backhand volley that failed to cross the net followed by a double fault saw Ancic lose serve in the 11th game.
Federer closed out the set on serve with an ace down the middle.
The storm clouds had disappeared by then but Ancic himself seemed to retreat into his own private haze.
After all, when you find out that your fifth gear is only good enough to run alongside your opponent for a precious few minutes, helplessness and a sense of gloom cannot be avoided.
In the event, Ancic very quickly came to terms with the situation and appeared ready to allow the great man to sprint to the finish, riding on a break in the fifth game of the third set.Great going
“I am playing great. Now it is two more matches. I know how to do it,” said a smiling Federer. “To win one more Wimbledon …” trailed off the man who has now made 17 straight Grand Slam semifinals.
In the women’s doubles quarterfinals, India’s Sania Mirza and her American partner Bethanie Mattek did their best to move mountains but, in the end, were good enough only to offer some high-voltage practice to the Williams sisters ahead of the superstars’ singles semifinal matches on Thursday.Super Sisters
The super sisters won 6-4, 6-3. Serena and Venus found an early break in the first set and, after two rain delays, went on to serve out the set.
In the second, the Indian-American pair broke Venus’s serve to go up 2-0 but once the famous sisters broke Mattek’s serve in the long fifth game, they were unstoppable. Sania was broken in the seventh game and from there it was just a matter of time.
Readers Do Note !
Hi,
Have been thinking of adding keywords in the Title description for easier identification of articles which are of interest to each of you.This will help you to read posts you would like reading rather than going through the pain of opening each post & finding out it isn't something which excites you.
The keywords decided as of now are
1.Fun - Funny reads/Survey Results etc
2. Business
3.Sports - The Nirmal Shekar columns etc would appear under this title
4.Lifestyle
5.India
6.World
7.Entertainment
8.Mktg - Marketing Posts
9.Columnists - Popular posts from Rajdeep/Barkha/Vir/Karan etc
Have been thinking of adding keywords in the Title description for easier identification of articles which are of interest to each of you.This will help you to read posts you would like reading rather than going through the pain of opening each post & finding out it isn't something which excites you.
The keywords decided as of now are
1.Fun - Funny reads/Survey Results etc
2. Business
3.Sports - The Nirmal Shekar columns etc would appear under this title
4.Lifestyle
5.India
6.World
7.Entertainment
8.Mktg - Marketing Posts
9.Columnists - Popular posts from Rajdeep/Barkha/Vir/Karan etc
Jul 2, 2008
Week 2 - Day 3 is over !
Hi,
The last couple of days have been a lil ordinary when it comes to posts.Travelled to tvm yesterday,today got stuck with Mammooty for a lil over 3 hours.So didn't get quality time to read/post.Will make amends for the lazy first half of the week.I promise !Time is 1904 hrs IST now.Paramesh celebrates his 3rd anniversary today,so here's wishing him a Happy anniversary.
Hope everyone testing waters ( checking out the blog) liked what they saw & will be back ready to read more.My bro comments/wonders if iam jobless looking at the number of posts he saw the last week.ha ;-)
So till tommorrow - Here is wishing all of you a fun filled evening & a good night's sleep.
Happy Readin!
Sri
The last couple of days have been a lil ordinary when it comes to posts.Travelled to tvm yesterday,today got stuck with Mammooty for a lil over 3 hours.So didn't get quality time to read/post.Will make amends for the lazy first half of the week.I promise !Time is 1904 hrs IST now.Paramesh celebrates his 3rd anniversary today,so here's wishing him a Happy anniversary.
Hope everyone testing waters ( checking out the blog) liked what they saw & will be back ready to read more.My bro comments/wonders if iam jobless looking at the number of posts he saw the last week.ha ;-)
So till tommorrow - Here is wishing all of you a fun filled evening & a good night's sleep.
Happy Readin!
Sri
US tastes Indian wedding spectaculars
Young Indian men with deep pockets are queuing up for Minnie to realise their fantasies. Those who can't afford her settle for Sadie, Cindy or Penelope who cost about $500 an hour.
Minnie is an elephant and the other three are white mares rented out for Indian weddings.
The four-legged beauties are part of a booming wedding industry that caters to the ever-growing demands of rich Indians in the US.
'Huge cost'
Manan Shah had a childhood dream of taking centre stage in his marriage procession - or baraat - on an elephant.
He was inspired by the Indian blockbuster of yesteryear, Haathi Mere Saathi, a movie about a boy with elephants as friends.
A relative's wedding in India where he saw an elephant carry the groom to the bride added to the fascination.
"I knew it was almost a lifetime wish for him and so I decided to go for it despite the huge cost,'' says his father Suresh Shah, who has lived in the US for more than 30 years.
Five or six years ago, it would have been an impossible wish to fulfil. But not anymore.
A few calls to the wedding planner and Minnie, a 3,175kg (7,000 pounds) grey Asian diva, is on her way to Washington DC from Connecticut.
"Elephants are the latest trend - and because there are not many around the demand is always high,'' says Sonal Shah, who runs an event planning agency Save The Date.
The cost of hiring an elephant can go up to $30,000 depending on distance - but people still seem to have the money to pay for it.
She says most of her Indian clientele wants bigger, better and more elaborate weddings.
"There's a great craze for new unreleased models of cars like Aston Martins, Ferraris and Lamborghinis for the baraat and I am also doing one where the groom will land on a helicopter,'' says Sonal Shah.
She has 25 such high-end weddings lined up for the year.
Bollywood inspired
No wonder Indian wedding planners have mushroomed all over the US. And so have supporting professionals like videographers, hair and make-up specialists, henna artists and so on.
The music and dance must also be Bollywood inspired, with specialist DJs and choreographers.
Kumar Singh, whose son was married recently, says 10 years ago it wasn't easy to get any of the accessories required for an elaborate Hindu wedding ritual.
"Now with a little luck maybe we are able to fire guns in the air the way we do it in India,'' says Mr Singh, who is in the auto and motel business.
Many of these wedding vendors are from backgrounds and cultures with no obvious links to Indian traditions and this growing industry has nurtured cross-cultural ties.
The Commerford family that owns Minnie has been in the animal attraction business for 35 years organising pet shows, pony and camel rides.
"It was last year that we got the first call for an elephant to be used in an Indian wedding and then we realised it was an exciting business opportunity,'' says Darlene Commerford.
The wedding was in New Jersey and the Indian family had a blanket made for Minnie which they gave to her as a parting gift.
'Wedding market boom'
Five years ago Midge Harmon, the founder of Harmon's Hayrides that now rents out white mares in Virginia and Washington DC, wasn't even aware of the Indian tradition of weddings where the groom makes a dramatic entrance on horseback.
Then, she only rented out cars for American weddings and did not have a white mare.
Now, she has three - Sadie, Cindy and Penelope.
"The demand has been huge and I invested in their training and even got brocades and traditional wedding attires for them from India,'' she said.
She has a better understanding of Indian traditions now and can differentiate between a Sikh and a Gujarati wedding.
"In fact, the handlers of these horses have a better understanding than me, as they are the ones who go to the weddings,'' she said.
But what is it that has triggered this boom in the Indian wedding market here?
Midge Harmon says the second generation Indians have now reached the marriageable age and there's a large number of young Indians who are in 20s and early 30s.
"They are Americanised, want to get married here but in the traditional ways and so the support facilities have grown to service them,'' she says.
And one things for sure. It's here to stay.
As Sonal Shah puts it: "It's one business with indefinite longevity.''
Minnie is an elephant and the other three are white mares rented out for Indian weddings.
The four-legged beauties are part of a booming wedding industry that caters to the ever-growing demands of rich Indians in the US.
'Huge cost'
Manan Shah had a childhood dream of taking centre stage in his marriage procession - or baraat - on an elephant.
He was inspired by the Indian blockbuster of yesteryear, Haathi Mere Saathi, a movie about a boy with elephants as friends.
A relative's wedding in India where he saw an elephant carry the groom to the bride added to the fascination.
"I knew it was almost a lifetime wish for him and so I decided to go for it despite the huge cost,'' says his father Suresh Shah, who has lived in the US for more than 30 years.
Five or six years ago, it would have been an impossible wish to fulfil. But not anymore.
A few calls to the wedding planner and Minnie, a 3,175kg (7,000 pounds) grey Asian diva, is on her way to Washington DC from Connecticut.
"Elephants are the latest trend - and because there are not many around the demand is always high,'' says Sonal Shah, who runs an event planning agency Save The Date.
The cost of hiring an elephant can go up to $30,000 depending on distance - but people still seem to have the money to pay for it.
She says most of her Indian clientele wants bigger, better and more elaborate weddings.
"There's a great craze for new unreleased models of cars like Aston Martins, Ferraris and Lamborghinis for the baraat and I am also doing one where the groom will land on a helicopter,'' says Sonal Shah.
She has 25 such high-end weddings lined up for the year.
Bollywood inspired
No wonder Indian wedding planners have mushroomed all over the US. And so have supporting professionals like videographers, hair and make-up specialists, henna artists and so on.
The music and dance must also be Bollywood inspired, with specialist DJs and choreographers.
Kumar Singh, whose son was married recently, says 10 years ago it wasn't easy to get any of the accessories required for an elaborate Hindu wedding ritual.
"Now with a little luck maybe we are able to fire guns in the air the way we do it in India,'' says Mr Singh, who is in the auto and motel business.
Many of these wedding vendors are from backgrounds and cultures with no obvious links to Indian traditions and this growing industry has nurtured cross-cultural ties.
The Commerford family that owns Minnie has been in the animal attraction business for 35 years organising pet shows, pony and camel rides.
"It was last year that we got the first call for an elephant to be used in an Indian wedding and then we realised it was an exciting business opportunity,'' says Darlene Commerford.
The wedding was in New Jersey and the Indian family had a blanket made for Minnie which they gave to her as a parting gift.
'Wedding market boom'
Five years ago Midge Harmon, the founder of Harmon's Hayrides that now rents out white mares in Virginia and Washington DC, wasn't even aware of the Indian tradition of weddings where the groom makes a dramatic entrance on horseback.
Then, she only rented out cars for American weddings and did not have a white mare.
Now, she has three - Sadie, Cindy and Penelope.
"The demand has been huge and I invested in their training and even got brocades and traditional wedding attires for them from India,'' she said.
She has a better understanding of Indian traditions now and can differentiate between a Sikh and a Gujarati wedding.
"In fact, the handlers of these horses have a better understanding than me, as they are the ones who go to the weddings,'' she said.
But what is it that has triggered this boom in the Indian wedding market here?
Midge Harmon says the second generation Indians have now reached the marriageable age and there's a large number of young Indians who are in 20s and early 30s.
"They are Americanised, want to get married here but in the traditional ways and so the support facilities have grown to service them,'' she says.
And one things for sure. It's here to stay.
As Sonal Shah puts it: "It's one business with indefinite longevity.''
Human costs of India Rail Link
What are the human costs of building a railway link in one of India's most restive regions?
To begin with, 36 people - railway workers and security forces guarding the tracks - died in some 28 rebel attacks during work to link the north-eastern city of Agartala in Tripura state to the rest of the country.
That's not all.
A total of 67 people connected with work on the rail link were kidnapped by the rebels. Only 19 were freed after ransom payouts.
The fate of the rest is still unknown.
On top of all that, a raging tribal insurgency in Tripura has ensured that the $186m, 109km-long (68-mile) link took 15 years to build.
But by the end of June, the link will be complete and Agartala will become the second state capital of north-east India - after Assam's capital, Guwahati - to find a place on India's railway map.
Big network
Trains first reached Tripura in 1964 when the railway was extended to the state's northern business hub, Dharmanagar. Later it was extended further to Kumarghat.
"But it has taken more than 40 years since then to connect Agartala by rail," said Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar.
In the last two years, Tripura's communist-led government has successfully contained the tribal insurgency.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has declared the railway link in Tripura a national project and more connections are planned.
Next on the cards is the extension of the railway from Agartala to southern Tripura.
FS Meena, chief engineer of the Northeast Frontier Railway, said work to build the 110km Agartala-Sabroom line would begin by January.
The project would cost almost as much as the one just completed to connect Agartala.
"After Indian Railways extends its line up to Sabroom, it would be very easy to connect with the Chittagong international port in Bangladesh, which is just 75km from there," says Manik Sarkar.
India recently signed a deal with Burma to upgrade the Sittwe port so that goods from Indian ports can land there and then be taken up to India's Mizoram state by river for onward shipment to other north-east Indian states.
"But if Bangladesh plays ball and allows Chittagong to be used for north-east Indian states, we will have an alternative access to the north-east from the Indian mainland," said Mr Sarkar.
The first train in the subcontinent ran on a 33km (21-mile) stretch of track from Mumbai (Bombay) to Thane in western India in 1853.
The first passenger train rolled out of the eastern city of Calcutta the following year.
Today, Indian Railways operate at least 11,000 trains every day covering 63,465km (39,435 miles) across the length and breadth of the country, making it one of the world's largest rail networks.
To begin with, 36 people - railway workers and security forces guarding the tracks - died in some 28 rebel attacks during work to link the north-eastern city of Agartala in Tripura state to the rest of the country.
That's not all.
A total of 67 people connected with work on the rail link were kidnapped by the rebels. Only 19 were freed after ransom payouts.
The fate of the rest is still unknown.
On top of all that, a raging tribal insurgency in Tripura has ensured that the $186m, 109km-long (68-mile) link took 15 years to build.
But by the end of June, the link will be complete and Agartala will become the second state capital of north-east India - after Assam's capital, Guwahati - to find a place on India's railway map.
Big network
Trains first reached Tripura in 1964 when the railway was extended to the state's northern business hub, Dharmanagar. Later it was extended further to Kumarghat.
"But it has taken more than 40 years since then to connect Agartala by rail," said Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar.
In the last two years, Tripura's communist-led government has successfully contained the tribal insurgency.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has declared the railway link in Tripura a national project and more connections are planned.
Next on the cards is the extension of the railway from Agartala to southern Tripura.
FS Meena, chief engineer of the Northeast Frontier Railway, said work to build the 110km Agartala-Sabroom line would begin by January.
The project would cost almost as much as the one just completed to connect Agartala.
"After Indian Railways extends its line up to Sabroom, it would be very easy to connect with the Chittagong international port in Bangladesh, which is just 75km from there," says Manik Sarkar.
India recently signed a deal with Burma to upgrade the Sittwe port so that goods from Indian ports can land there and then be taken up to India's Mizoram state by river for onward shipment to other north-east Indian states.
"But if Bangladesh plays ball and allows Chittagong to be used for north-east Indian states, we will have an alternative access to the north-east from the Indian mainland," said Mr Sarkar.
The first train in the subcontinent ran on a 33km (21-mile) stretch of track from Mumbai (Bombay) to Thane in western India in 1853.
The first passenger train rolled out of the eastern city of Calcutta the following year.
Today, Indian Railways operate at least 11,000 trains every day covering 63,465km (39,435 miles) across the length and breadth of the country, making it one of the world's largest rail networks.
Pakistan's poor hit as food prices soar
They line up most days of the week, to get a chance to grab the free food that is doled out here.
Hands outstretched, they clamour to get an extra helping of whatever is on offer.
Hunger in the eyes of the young children, desperation in the eyes of their mothers. Many women hid their faces, ashamed and embarrassed that their misfortune is being witnessed by others.
Everyone tells the same story. That they have no choice, that they are forced to rely on the charity of others, because of the crippling effect of rising food prices.
Meagre earnings
In Islamic scripture, it is part and parcel of a good human being's duty to provide food for the poor and the helpless.
At Sabri restaurant you can feed an impoverished Karachi resident for 20 Pakistani rupees (33 US cents; 16 pence).
But just a year ago the same charitable act would have cost you 15 cents - less than half what it costs today.
The jump in the price of food in Pakistan has forced many into destitution.
Ayesha Begum is among the hungry who are queuing for food in Karachi.
Most weeks she visits this restaurant three or four times. Sometimes, when times are really bad, she comes twice a day.
"What can I do?" she asks as she awaits her turn to get a dish of beef and chicken gravy. "I have no option.
"My husband works in a factory, and I have seven children. His salary hasn't been increased in two years.
"The meagre earnings he makes used to be just about enough to feed us all, but now the price of food is so high we can't afford anything."
No wheat
Prices in Karachi's markets have jumped to their highest level in 30 years.
In Empress Market, one of the city's largest vegetable markets, Pervez Begum, 59, has come in the hope that she can fill her bags with food for that evening's dinner.
But after having gone from stall to stall, from cart to cart, bargaining with the vegetable sellers in the markets over the price of their goods, she returns home empty handed.
"I am a single woman, a widow, and I have no children to look after me," she says.
"The only money I make comes from selling coins to commuters who need small change for their public transport.
"That doesn't make me very much. I thought today I could come and buy some wheat for my dinner, but I can't afford it."
This is becoming a critical problem for Pakistan's people.
The price of wheat, something that most Pakistanis eat in their daily diet, rose 26% in just one month.
Financial assistance
Pakistan's new government says it is doing all it can to ease the burden of the country's poor.
In the recent budget, it announced the Benazir Income Support Programme.
The plan is to hand out $15 (£7.50) a month to low income families, to help them with the higher cost of living.
But many Pakistanis say that at the rate prices are rising, that is hardly going to help.
Abbas Raza, one of millions of Pakistanis who qualifies for the extra money, is haggling in the market over the price of a few potatoes for his family's dinner.
"My son is the only person in my family who is still earning," he says on the way back to his house.
"We spend most of his earnings on rent. Whatever else we have left, we have to make do with. It was tough before, but it's almost impossible now."
Questions, not answers
Back at home, his wife Mudassar Raza complains bitterly about her husband's inability to bring back anything substantial from the vegetable market.
She had planned to cook a beef and potato stew for dinner for the family, but had to make do with just a few potatoes. It was all her husband could afford.
"What difference will $15 make?" she asks pointedly as she peels her paltry sum of potatoes.
"Not much. $15 isn't worth five dollars these days. Why doesn't the government create more jobs in Pakistan so that older people like my husband can go out and get work?
"Why doesn't the government sort out our electricity problems, so that when we do have food we can cook a full meal without the lights going off on us?"
So many questions, yet the new government does not have many answers.
'Damaged economy'
Kaiser Bengali, an economic consultant for Pakistan's new government, helped the new administration work out its financial spending plans in the recent budget.
He counters the criticism that this new administration has failed to fix Pakistan's problems quickly enough.
"We inherited a damaged economy from the previous regime," he says, alluding to the rule of President Pervez Musharraf.
"The headline numbers you saw, the growth that was talked about, that was all just perception.
"There was a perception created by the regime that Pakistan was doing well, but it was all false growth - in the services sector, without any real foundation. It will take the new administration some time to sort out the economic issues here."
But the new administration has political problems to sort out first.
The criticism it faces is that so much time is spent on in-fighting and jostling for seats that not enough attention is paid to the economy.
While their government figures out what steps to take next, Pakistanis have no choice, but to wait and enjoy life's simple pleasures.
One of the few free recreational activities for poor and lower middle class Karachi residents is to head to the city's beaches on Sundays, with their families.
Here they can indulge in fresh sea air, and for a few short hours, escape from the worries of soaring prices and unpaid bills back in the city.
All they can do now is hope that a brighter future for Pakistan is on the horizon.
Hands outstretched, they clamour to get an extra helping of whatever is on offer.
Hunger in the eyes of the young children, desperation in the eyes of their mothers. Many women hid their faces, ashamed and embarrassed that their misfortune is being witnessed by others.
Everyone tells the same story. That they have no choice, that they are forced to rely on the charity of others, because of the crippling effect of rising food prices.
Meagre earnings
In Islamic scripture, it is part and parcel of a good human being's duty to provide food for the poor and the helpless.
At Sabri restaurant you can feed an impoverished Karachi resident for 20 Pakistani rupees (33 US cents; 16 pence).
But just a year ago the same charitable act would have cost you 15 cents - less than half what it costs today.
The jump in the price of food in Pakistan has forced many into destitution.
Ayesha Begum is among the hungry who are queuing for food in Karachi.
Most weeks she visits this restaurant three or four times. Sometimes, when times are really bad, she comes twice a day.
"What can I do?" she asks as she awaits her turn to get a dish of beef and chicken gravy. "I have no option.
"My husband works in a factory, and I have seven children. His salary hasn't been increased in two years.
"The meagre earnings he makes used to be just about enough to feed us all, but now the price of food is so high we can't afford anything."
No wheat
Prices in Karachi's markets have jumped to their highest level in 30 years.
In Empress Market, one of the city's largest vegetable markets, Pervez Begum, 59, has come in the hope that she can fill her bags with food for that evening's dinner.
But after having gone from stall to stall, from cart to cart, bargaining with the vegetable sellers in the markets over the price of their goods, she returns home empty handed.
"I am a single woman, a widow, and I have no children to look after me," she says.
"The only money I make comes from selling coins to commuters who need small change for their public transport.
"That doesn't make me very much. I thought today I could come and buy some wheat for my dinner, but I can't afford it."
This is becoming a critical problem for Pakistan's people.
The price of wheat, something that most Pakistanis eat in their daily diet, rose 26% in just one month.
Financial assistance
Pakistan's new government says it is doing all it can to ease the burden of the country's poor.
In the recent budget, it announced the Benazir Income Support Programme.
The plan is to hand out $15 (£7.50) a month to low income families, to help them with the higher cost of living.
But many Pakistanis say that at the rate prices are rising, that is hardly going to help.
Abbas Raza, one of millions of Pakistanis who qualifies for the extra money, is haggling in the market over the price of a few potatoes for his family's dinner.
"My son is the only person in my family who is still earning," he says on the way back to his house.
"We spend most of his earnings on rent. Whatever else we have left, we have to make do with. It was tough before, but it's almost impossible now."
Questions, not answers
Back at home, his wife Mudassar Raza complains bitterly about her husband's inability to bring back anything substantial from the vegetable market.
She had planned to cook a beef and potato stew for dinner for the family, but had to make do with just a few potatoes. It was all her husband could afford.
"What difference will $15 make?" she asks pointedly as she peels her paltry sum of potatoes.
"Not much. $15 isn't worth five dollars these days. Why doesn't the government create more jobs in Pakistan so that older people like my husband can go out and get work?
"Why doesn't the government sort out our electricity problems, so that when we do have food we can cook a full meal without the lights going off on us?"
So many questions, yet the new government does not have many answers.
'Damaged economy'
Kaiser Bengali, an economic consultant for Pakistan's new government, helped the new administration work out its financial spending plans in the recent budget.
He counters the criticism that this new administration has failed to fix Pakistan's problems quickly enough.
"We inherited a damaged economy from the previous regime," he says, alluding to the rule of President Pervez Musharraf.
"The headline numbers you saw, the growth that was talked about, that was all just perception.
"There was a perception created by the regime that Pakistan was doing well, but it was all false growth - in the services sector, without any real foundation. It will take the new administration some time to sort out the economic issues here."
But the new administration has political problems to sort out first.
The criticism it faces is that so much time is spent on in-fighting and jostling for seats that not enough attention is paid to the economy.
While their government figures out what steps to take next, Pakistanis have no choice, but to wait and enjoy life's simple pleasures.
One of the few free recreational activities for poor and lower middle class Karachi residents is to head to the city's beaches on Sundays, with their families.
Here they can indulge in fresh sea air, and for a few short hours, escape from the worries of soaring prices and unpaid bills back in the city.
All they can do now is hope that a brighter future for Pakistan is on the horizon.
Medieterranean diet cuts Cancer
A study of 26,000 Greek people found just using more olive oil alone cut the risk by 9%.
The diet, reports the British Journal of Cancer, also includes higher amounts of fruits, vegetables, cereals, and less red meat.
A separate study found adding broccoli to meals might help men vulnerable to prostate cancer cut their risk.
The Mediterranean diet came under scrutiny after researchers noticed lower rates of illnesses such as heart disease in countries such as Spain and Greece.
They noticed that people living there generally ate more vegetables and fish, less red meat, cooked in olive oil and drank moderate amounts of alcohol.
The latest study is one of the largest yet to look at the potential impact on cancer of the various parts of this diet.
'No superfood'
Researchers from Harvard University persuaded thousands of Greek people of various ages to record their food intake over an eight-year-period.
Their adherence to the Mediterranean diet was ranked using a scoring system, and the group with the worst
The diet, reports the British Journal of Cancer, also includes higher amounts of fruits, vegetables, cereals, and less red meat.
A separate study found adding broccoli to meals might help men vulnerable to prostate cancer cut their risk.
The Mediterranean diet came under scrutiny after researchers noticed lower rates of illnesses such as heart disease in countries such as Spain and Greece.
They noticed that people living there generally ate more vegetables and fish, less red meat, cooked in olive oil and drank moderate amounts of alcohol.
The latest study is one of the largest yet to look at the potential impact on cancer of the various parts of this diet.
'No superfood'
Researchers from Harvard University persuaded thousands of Greek people of various ages to record their food intake over an eight-year-period.
Their adherence to the Mediterranean diet was ranked using a scoring system, and the group with the worst